:m 



ml 



Mmmi 



V'i 



i'ii 









11 






ili il ill' 



il'^H 



i'(;h»i 



i !■ 



!li!i. 









N^i| ! 



liiUl'ili)? 



ili'..: 




'!;, 



liii 



I '-il' ill !| 

{ h'i nil 

mm 






r. ,■ 






C**^ ^ "^ 









5? J" >^y>. '" 



<-•=.• 



,A-.^ 



'■l L-' -^ - •;-' 



c^r^ 






>' Y 









* o ., f.^ -0 



V 



o^ 



A 












V 









l°- '%4 



>'^' ' 



c 



'^. 






>-.. :t, 



% ,^^' 



A'- 



.t\- 



c 



V^^ ^ « ^ '■ -? ^o 












# 



^^^ ^''^. 



'^C^ 






\Q^^. 









,5 --^^. ^ 






"^ <^ 









■:"*^ V 



,0o. 



"oo 



\ 






.\oO 



apJ^ ; ^ 






- ,-?■■ •=^, ,"Va;'> 



■^ .<^ 



''^ \ >""' s ^ ' ' / 






.0- 



^' 



' " " /■ '''c' 



/ < 



'^>^ 









— - <:<. ■ 



V^^' . 







^'^^'^^ 



/• c> 














OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



WHAT'S THE MATTER 
WITH MEXICO? 



OVR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



The Pentecost of Calamity 

By Owen Wister 
The Hekitage of Tyre 

By William Brown Meloney 
The Forks of the Road 

By Washington Gladden 
Straight America 

By Frances A. Kellor 
Americanization 

By Royal Dixon 
Their TRtUe Faith and Allegiancb 

By Gustavus Oblinger 
What's the Matter with Mexico? 

By Caspar Whitney 

FIFTY CENTS THE VOLUME 



WHAT'S THE MATTER 
WITH MEXICO? 



BY 

CASPAR WHITNEY 

AUTHOR OF "the FLOWING ROAD," 
"HAWAIIAN AMERICA," ETC. 



N?m fork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 

All rights reserved 






\\d 



/ 




Copyright, 1916. 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1916. 



OCT i2!9l6 



iOf 






f^(0 that abused group of my 



^jf Countrymen, driven from 
their homes and denied the pro- 
tection of their Government — 
which protection, if afforded, 
would Jong ago, without war, have 
brought peace to desolated 
Mexico— this little book is dedi- 
cated with genuine sympathy. 



. x: 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Question • • 1 

Who Abe the Mexicans? 2 

Making a Misfit Constitution .... 7 

The Revolutionary Habit 18 

The Sub^merged 80 Per Cent 43 

The Man and the Job — Diaz — Maeero 76 
When the Americans Went to Mexico . 90 

What Is a Concession? 118 

When Carranza Came to Town . . .127 
Under Pre-constitutional Conditions . 141 
The Meditations of a Theorist . . . 161 
DuM-DuMS IN the Name of Humanity . 179 

'What Mexico Needs 184 

The Cost of a Duty-Last Policy . . .200 
The Answer ^^^ 



WHAT'S THE MATTER 
WITH MEXICO? 



The Question 

IN Mexico both native and foreigner 
are in distress ; in America perplex- 
ity rules as to cause, and confused dis- 
cussion as to the action we should take 
for the safety of our citizens and the 
help of the Mexicans. 

What is this trouble? Why are our 
troops along the border, and in Mexico, 
without the consent and against the 
protest of the revolutionist First Chief 
whom the Government of the United 
States recognised ? Why are the Amer- 
ican people called on to share if not to 
solve the problem of its sadly deranged 
neighbour ? 

The Mexicans have a Constitution as 
lofty in sentiment and as comprehen- 
sive in scope as our own ; and have had 
since 1857. Why does not this Con- 
stitution guide them to the political 
peace it provides? 



(E 



Who Are the Mexicans? 

TO understand the present state of 
Mexico you must understand 
Mexican conditions ; and to understand 
Mexican conditions you must under- 
stand Mexican character. To under- 
stand Mexican character you must 
know the blood mixture which flows in 
his veins ; and, if you would escape false 
and misleading notions, you must com- 
prehend, deeply, for things in Mexico 
are not often what they seem to be to 
the onlooker. 

The aborigines were not chiefly 
" Indians," as we are wont casually to 
call them, but Aztecs, Toltecs, Zapo- 
tecs — that numerous, sturdy race 
which there and in Peru left architec- 
tural and engineering monuments re- 
vealing art, inventive genius, and me- 
chanical skill to prove them a people 
apart from, and above in culture, the 
roving Redmen of the North. But 
there were Indians also in this earliest 
period, Yaquis and Apaches in the 

2 



Who Are the Mexicans? 3 

Northwest, and many small tribes of 
many tongues along the west coast and 
in the South, the descendants of whom, 
the ethnologists say, are to-day repre- 
sented by the something like one hun- 
dred and twenty-five tribes, speaking 
fifty different dialects, that are dis- 
tributed in limited numbers throughout 
the country but more especially along 
and just behind the western littoral. 

Commonly and comprehensively we 
refer to all these aboriginal races, and 
to their pure descendants, as Indians ; 
and if the reference is loose, yet it has 
the value of distinguishing between the 
peoples that were originally on the soil 
and those which have come through 
cross breeding. 

These scattered tribes differed little 
if any from those of North America in 
character or habit ; but the Aztecs and 
allied peoples are set down by the his- 
torians of that period as being highly 
religious and notably cruel. Human 
sacrifice was a common practice of their 
priests, and flaying a prisoner one of 
the tortures visited upon a captured 
enemy. 

It is recounted by the Abbe Claviger 
in his " History of Mexico " (published 



4 What's the Matter with Mexico? 

1806), that instead of killing they cut 
off the ears of their opponents in one 
battle and preserved them in baskets to 
show their allies as evidence of their 
prowess. 

During the time I was in the State of 
Tamaulipas, 1914-15, Constitutionalist 
troopers caught a " bandit " who had 
given them a hard chase, and to make 
sure he would not again escape, as once 
before he had, they sliced off the soles 
of his feet ! 

When the Spaniards came to Mexico 
with their arts and their agricultural 
skill, their industrial training, their 
church and their avarice, they found in 
this hardy people, who had so valor- 
ously defended their capital city until 
betrayed and overwhelmed, a means 
ready at hand to till the soil, and to 
search the mountains for that golden 
storehouse of which they had heard and 
dreamed. 

The settled lands the Spaniards dis- 
tributed among the Indians (I shall 
hereafter use this term when referring 
to the aborigine or his unmixed de- 
scendant) under a form of share-work- 
ing with an over-chief; the unsettled 
land and the mines they took for them- 



Who Are the Mexicans? 5 

selves. Thus the vanquished Indian be- 
came the man-of -all-work in his own 
country for the victorious, domineer- 
ing Spaniard; the miner, the farm- 
hand, the unskilled labourer, or the 
peon, as we hear him most often called 
— a master and, what was practically, 
a serf class. 

The new Spanish colony thrived; the 
haciendas flourished on the plains, the 
hills yielded bountifully of a wondrous 
treasure, and Spaniards that came orig- 
inally to adventure remained to build 
their homes. Gradually through the 
intermarriage of these Europeans and 
the natives there grew up another and 
a third class, between the peon workers 
on the one hand and the alien masters 
on the other; a class combining the 
pride, the tyranny, the moroseness, the 
fighting spirit of Spain, with the vision, 
the improvidence, the cruelty, the care- 
free hopefulness of the aborigine. 

The arrogance of Castile with the 
fanaticism of Anahuac. It was a mix- 
ture which did not suggest co-opera- 
tive, peaceful, constructive partner- 
ship. 

From this source came the human 
division we see to-day in Mexico. (1) 



6 Wliat*s the Matter with Metric of 

An inert, illiterate, tractable mass — a 
political nonentity; (2) a partially ed- 
ucated, mixed, or middle-class — active, 
but ambitious beyond its efficiency and 
excessively vain; (3) a comparatively 
small upper or capital or educated 
class, having but slight regard for the 
proletariat, little patriotism, and less 
civic courage — also active, and 
shrewd, but in the making of their own 
fortunes rather than in the general de- 
velopment and advancement of their 
people. 

Of such components — unprepared 
by education or training, unfitted by 
habit or temperament, distrustful and 
discordant — has the occasional pa- 
triot in Mexico sought to build a Re- 
public. 



Making a Misfit Constitution 

JSCONTENT was sure to come 
out of this mixture of dissimilar 
bloods and unfair adjustment of rela- 
tions; and a glance at the revolutions 
which followed fast will help immeas- 
urably to a comprehension of the situa- 
tion to-day. 

Of the names that stand out in mem- 
ory and in Mexican history — Father 
Miguel Hidalgo, 1810; Jose Morelos, 
1813 ; Augustin Iturbide, 1821 ; Vicente 
Guerrero, 1827; Juan Alvarez, 1854; 
Bentio Juarez, 1857; Porfirio Diaz, 
1876; Francisco Madero, 1911 — 
every one came to power as the leader 
of a revolt against an existing govern- 
ment. Hidalgo, Morelos, Guerrero, 
Alvarez, Juarez, were men of high char- 
acter and moved undoubtedly by senti- 
ments of genuine patriotism — nor is 
there any doubt of Madero's honest 
ideals and sincere purpose — and of 
these Morelos, Guerrero, Juarez — a 
pure Zapotec — and Diaz — a Mixtec 

7 



8 Whafs the Matter witli Mexico? 

half caste — had foresight and mental 
endowment. 

Hidalgo, a Spanish priest of Dolores 
in the mining State of Guanajuato, is 
popularly accredited with making the 
first stroke for freedom, but two years 
before had been an earlier attempt 
which failed through the treachery of 
one of the conspirators. 

Hidalgo made some progress, gath- 
ering adherents by aid of government 
treasure which he had " promptly 
seized " at the outset, and fighting gal- 
lantly against heavy odds and deter- 
mined opposition. His supporters 
proved recreant to their pledges, how- 
ever, in an important locality and at a 
critical moment, and finally the Father 
was betrayed by one of his own officers, 
captured, and executed. 

Morelos, who picked up the mantle 
of Hidalgo, maintained the struggle 
long enough to proclaim (in 1813) the 
Constitution of Apatzingam declaring 
for rights of citizenship, elections, free 
ballot, and liberty of press. But de- 
fections from his followers, lack of 
funds, and especially the first, weakened 
his force and he, too, was captured and 
shot. 



Making a Misfit Constituiion 9 

Iturbide, sometimes called the " lib- 
erator of Mexico " because of his Plan 
de Iguala declaring for independence, 
who raised himself to power by a cuar- 
telazo through the help of Santa Ana 
— was ejected a year later by the same 
Santa Ana — who faced always which- 
ever way best suited his own advance- 
ment — and ordered executed by the 
very congress he had previously while 
in power ordered dissolved. Up to this 
period the church had exercised a de- 
ciding and widely recognised influence 
in the affairs of state, but with the war 
of independence the army became the 
supreme force of the nation. And now 
was established the cuartelazo, or mili- 
tary uprising, expressive of individual 
ambition and the disaffected elements 
which have supplied Mexico with revo- 
lutionists since 1821. 

Guerrero, second president of the 
Republic, called " the Great Commoner 
of Mexico," whom Iturbide had scan- 
dalously used as an unwitting dupe dur- 
ing his administration, was overthrown 
by a cuartelazo, abandoned by the en- 
tire army which had but just acclaimed 
him, and deserted even by his personal 
following. He sought the peons of the 



10 Wliafs the Matter zcitli Mexico? 

soil whom he had always befriended and 
for whom he had achieved freedom from 
the advance wage debt system, but they, 
too, turned from him and joined the 
rebellion. Though literally a man of 
the people, and a leader who had served 
their interests ceaselessly, they forsook 
him in the hour of his need for another 
with alluring promise. Guerrero's end 
is characteristic and familiar; he was 
betrayed by a trusted friend, and shot 
October, 1831. 

In the work of a native historian we 
read — " it was charged against the ad- 
ministration of Guerrero that he en- 
deavoured to rule in a democratic spirit 
a people ignorant and inexperienced 
and devoid of democratic training and 
traditions." And again of the period 
following, that " the generals and high 
officers of the army (during the presi- 
dency of Bustamante) " under cover of 
the fueros, supplemented their hand- 
some salaries by operating counterfeit 
mints, gambling hells, and gaudy 
brothels; while the lesser officers con- 
tented themselves with. mere blackmail- 
ing and open highway robbery and . . . 
*' occasionally the army went into busi- 
ness for itself on a large scale and in- 



Making a Misfit Constitution 11 

stituted farcical revolts and uprisings 
for purposes of loot and rape," until 
finally Bustamante, who had come into 
office through the cuartelazo by which 
he deposed Guerrero, was himself over- 
thrown by a cuartelazo in 1841. 

And now for several years with the 
country in anarchy and its resources 
depleted, cuartelazo followed cuartelazo 
until Herrera, who was raised to the 
presidency in 1845 as a relief from the 
mercenary Santa Ana, was himself put 
out of office within the year by cuarte- 
lazo. But the year following a cuarte- 
lazo put the treacherous Santa Ana 
back in power again and called upon 
congress to frame a monarchical consti- 
tution. 

The ever lurking cuartelazo having 
ousted the then president — Arista — 
the first official act of his successor, 
Juan Cevallos, was to abolish the con- 
gress ! 

Perhaps another quotation from the 
native history of this period showing a 
deliberate plot to embroil Texas, will 
be informing to those that are ever so 
insistent in their criticism of the United 
States Government for the Mexican 
War of 1847. The quotation serves 



12 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

also as a parallel to recent and famil- 
iar happenings during 1916. 

" The necessity of keeping the atten- 
tion of the people from domestic af- 
fairs compelled the clerical party once 
more to resuscitate the idea of a war 
with the United States for the recovery 
of Texas, and catholic press and cheap 
politicians vied with each other in their 
efforts to inflame public sentiment in 
favour of the plan. The ruse suc- 
ceeded immediately in so far as it gave 
the government sufficient strength to 
suppress the revolutionary movement 
for federalism in Tampico and Puebla." 

There is an impressively familiar 
note in this for those who recall the 
political weavings and manifestos of 
Huerta and Carranza. 

That stalwart figure, Alvarez, headed 
a successful revolution in 1854 with his 
Plan de Ayutla " discharging " the 
Santa Ana pest, whom he also defeated, 
and in the year following representa- 
tives to congress were instructed to as- 
semble for the purpose of framing an- 
other new constitution. The call re- 
sulted in the historic meeting of which 
Juarez and Alvarez were the command- 
ing figures, and in the drafting and fi- 



Making a Misfit Constitution 13 

nallj in the promulgation (1857) of 
Mexico's present constitution. Alvarez 
became the natural choice for president 
during this formative period, but estab- 
lished the altogether quite unusual 
precedent of resigning office shortly 
after without request or pressure and 
was succeeded by Ignacio Comonfort. 

Within fifteen days after the adop- 
tion of the new constitution, Comon- 
fort was defeated and driven into exile 
by a cuartelazo headed by Felix Zu- 
loaga, who was forthwith made provi- 
sional president. His first act as presi- 
dent was to abolish this new constitu- 
tion which expressed " the aspirations 
of the Mexican people " and had been 
forty-seven years in making. 

The native historian in commenting 
on this phase of his country's revolu- 
tionary agony tells us that Comonfort, 
who on taking the presidential office, 
had shown a more lenient attitude 
towards his erstwhile opponents — as 
for example imprisoning instead of 
shooting, as had been the custom, po- 
litical offenders, deserting soldiers, and 
the like — was inspired by the hope 
" that a policy of liberality and mercy 
would appeal to the better nature of his 



14 Whafs the Matter with Mexicof 

opponents and bring to weary, blood- 
stained Mexico a period of peace and 
good will." 'Twas a hope not real- 
ised. 

After three bloody years of fighting, 
Juarez entered Mexico City and opened 
congress with a spirited and patriotic 
speech in which he declared " the fed- 
eration is now compact and united by 
constitutional ties, and ready to sus- 
tain our national institution and to en- 
force and obey the laws enacted by this 
sovereign assembly." And on his re- 
election after the French intervention 
period, Porfirio Diaz issued his Plan 
de la Noria and set out to depose him 
with a revolution, which, however, be- 
cause Juarez was both ready and 
strong, failed almost at its inception. 

Juarez died in 1872, leaving one of 
the greatest names in Mexico's history 
and his country in comparative peace 
on the threshold of awakening to indus- 
trial development. 

Lerdo de Tejada, who succeeded him, 
followed in his wise footsteps of keeping 
the military out of civil administration 
to a very large extent, yet an element 
of disquiet soon again raised its dis- 
torted head, and in 1876 Porfirio Diaz 



Mdtdng a Misfit Constitution 15 

issued his Tuxtepcc plan which " dis- 
charged " Tejada and all opposing gov- 
ernors, declared against re-election of 
either president or governors, and ap- 
pointed himself " interim president 
pending a presidential election." 

Tejada lacked the iron hand and will 
of his great predecessor Juarez ; his 
ways had been more the w^ays of peace, 
so that he was unequal to resisting this 
new revolutionist, who, marching into 
Mexico City, was accepted at once as 
president. 

Juarez was the best of Mexico's rulers 
to that time, and Tejada an excellent 
one; their regimes, 1867-75, called the 
" Restoration Period," brought the 
first peace the country had experienced 
and gave the people enjoyment of the 
full democracy granted under the con- 
stitution of 1857 for which they had as- 
pired and fought. The country was 
just beginning to settle to habits of 
peace and the beginning of prosperity. 
Yet in the face of this, when General 
Hernandez in Oaxaca launched his 
cuartelazo for Diaz, it was at once fol- 
lowed by cuartelazos with the same ob- 
ject all over the country even from 
Lower California to Vera Cruz ! 



16 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

The impulse of revolutionists previ- 
ous to Alvarez had been, according to 
native history, " to overthrow the power 
that denied them high official position," 
but Francisco Madero, in his 1910 Plan 
of San Luis Potosi calling for free 
ballot and non-re-election, introduced 
" free land " and made it the slogan of 
his revolt against Diaz. 

When in October, 1911, Madero was 
elected president he, like Guerrero and 
Comonfort before him, sought to admin- 
ister his office in a democratic spirit, 
instituting a " generous and merciful 
attitude " towards his erstwhile politi- 
cal opponents — and again like Guer- 
rero and Comonfort, he, too, found a 
people " ignorant " and " devoid of 
democratic training." 

From 1810 when Father Hidalgo 
made the first bid for independence, to 
1913 when Madero was murdered, the 
duration in office of Mexico's many rul- 
ers had averaged, apart from the 
Juarez and Diaz regimes, scarcely one 
year each. Contention for leadership 
has kept the country in desperate and 
well-nigh unending strife, until 1857, to 
secure a constitution, and since then, 
ostensibly, to put that constitution 



Making a Misfit Constitution 17 

into operation. In one hundred and 
six years there have been forty-one 
years of peace (of comparative peace 
many of them) — seven under Juarez- 
Tejada, and thirty-four under Diaz- 
Gonzales. 

Bearing upon our study of condi- 
tions in present day Mexico, the im- 
partial history of this period reveals 
three prominent facts, viz: 

(1) That the revolts have sprung 
from individual and not from popular 
impulse ; 

(2) That the people were irresolute 
in principle; 

(3) That the people were fickle in 
conduct. 



The Revolutionaey Habit 

SO we come to the question of why '' 
these revolutions continue now 
that Mexico has a liberal and free spir- 
ited constitution, how they start, how 
maintained, their effect upon the peoT 
pie, and why results appear never to be 
conclusive. 

We must keep in mind that original 
blood mixture, the three hundred years 
of Spanish greed and domination before 
freedom came, and the division of the 
population as it stands to-day. In 
round numbers there are, or rather 
were in 1910, about fifteen millions of 
all classes. Of these it is estimated that 
sixty per cent., or about nine millions, 
are pure, direct descendants of their 
aboriginal forebears ; thirty per cent, 
or about four and a half million repre- 
sent the mixed class of Indian and 
Spanish — the Mexican so-called ; and 
ten per cent, or approximately one 

million and a half answer for the Span- 
18 



Tlie Revolutionary Habit 19 

iards of the pure blood and the foreign- 
ers, of whom Americans comprised the 
largest number, reckoned to be at that 
time fully fifty thousand or more. 

In every revolution, as in this one 
also, there were men inspired by sin- 
cere and patriotic motives, but as a rule 
their origin has been in motives less 
honourable. 

Most revolutions start by some dis- 
affected local leader with political am- 
bitions and a grievance, gathering his 
friends and employes under a plan 
promising solution of all national ills, 
and the unhampered pursuit of happi- 
ness for his supporters. Following the 
tradition established by Hidalgo he 
opens the jail and then sallies forth, 
confiscating whatever he is strong 
enough to take and destroying what- 
ever property of the " enemy " he can- 
not use. If there is public treasure, he 
takes it, and if there are foreign com- 
panies in the neighbourhood, they as 
well as the merchants and the bankers 
yield a " loan " for as much as happens 
to be in sight. From the church money 
is extorted by imprisonment, or tor- 
ture, or threat of death. Such are the 
sources of support of all revolutionists 



20 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

before thej get hold of the Govern- 
ment. 

The free and not too dangerous or 
onerous Hfe of the army, the lax disci- 
phne, the license to appropriate what- 
ever property may be found along the 
march, the freedom from confining ; 
steady labour, constitute a strong ap- 
peal to the Indian half of that mixed 
blood, and make of recruiting the sim- 
ple proposition of some ready money 
and a plenty of promise. So every 
man with nothing to lose but his life, 
turns revolutionist. It becomes the 
best business in sight for the peon, 
sometimes the only business. He has 
no clear knowledge of the quarrel be- 
yond what his immediate jefe (chief) 
tells him, not even for what or for 
whom he fights. He has done what his 
jefe has told him to do time out of 
mind, and he fights because the jefe 
tells him to fight and promises him a 
share of the booty. It is the personal- 
ism of politics in Mexico. Thus the 
peons form the rank and file of the 
army, while from the ranchero, the ha- 
ccndado, the gang boss of the city, the 
bandit of the country, come the offi- 
cers. The politican lawyers, the dis- 



The Revolutionary Habit 21 

appointed office seekers, the dream- 
ers, and the fanatics furnish the agi- 
tators, the orators, the press 
agents. 

The very easiest thing to start in 
Mexico is a revolution ; first, because 
their constitution does not agree with 
the nature and the character of the peo- 
ple ; second, because it is personalism 
in Mexican politics and not the law or 
even thought of country that rules and 
influences action ; and third, because 
the bullet and not the vote is the rec- 
ognised medium for settling differences 
in political opinion. It is the code of 
the country that a man who fails at the 
polls must fight ; otherwise he is po- 
litically dead. That is why foreigners 
living in Mexico dread an election — 
even of the " arranged " variety which 
has obtained — quite as much as a 
revolution, for the first has been the 
usual forerunner of the second. Ma- 
dero was put in office, swept in on an 
emotional wave towards an impractic- 
able ideal, as a result of undoubtedly 
the fairest election Mexico has ever 
seen ; yet two revolutions — Reyes and 
Gomez — immediately followed ; and 
Madero's appointment of half a dozen 



22 What's the Matter with Mexico? 

governors was followed by as many se- 
rious State revolts. 

In Guanajuato, the governor, Vil- 
lasenor, congratulated his successful 
opponent — and forthwith killed him- 
self politically for his very unusual and 
un-Mexican act. The people looked 
upon him as a poor thing lacking spirit 
and not entitled to further support. 

Before the interview Porfirio Diaz 
gave James Creelman in 1908, there 
had been during the Dictator's reign, 
no other party. It was all Diaz. A 
man was a Porfirista or he kept his 
opinions to himself. But in this pub- 
lished interview which Diaz did not 
deny, the General said he was going to 
make the next election — 1910 — a 
real election; that he was determined 
to retire ; that he hoped for an election 
which would express the choice of the 
Mexican people, and desired parties 
to form and offer candidates. This 
statement caused Mexico to gasp in un- 
disguised surprise, but as there came 
no word to the contrary from the Cas- 
tle, a movement started to organise for 
and discuss possible candidates. The 
Partido Democratico, a party having 
for its slogan "no personalities; prin- 



The Revolutionary Habit S3 

ciples only," was formed. It was a 
strange happening and aroused much 
interest throughout the country. At 
the first meeting, the attempt to elect 
a chairman developed such commotion 
through the heated advocacy of rival 
candidates that the meeting finally 
broke up in disorder. And that was 
the end of the Partido Democratico. 
It never revived. 

When Eulalio Gutierrez was elected 
^' Convention " President at Aguas 
Calientes October, 1914, after Villa 
had come down from the north and 
Carranza had refused to come up from 
the south, General Antonio Villareal, 
who had brazenly courted the honour, 
disputed the Chairman, split the party 
and left town in a fury. Later when 
Gutierrez fled before Villa from Mex- 
ico City to set himself up as president 
independent of this Convention or of 
Villa or Carranza, taking Lucio Blanco 
and other disaffected members of the 
party with him, he carried off ten mil- 
lion pesos of the national treasury. 
And all factions represented at the 
Aguas Calientes Convention, which sub- 
sequently waged war on one another 
— Obregon, Villareal, Gonzales, Agui- 



M Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

lar, Gutierrez, Villa, and Zapata — 
present or represented, wrote their 
names in token of their complete ac- 
cord upon the flag of Mexico amid 
cheers and tears and a vast oratorical 
outpouring to attest their patriotism 
and their loyalty to the Convention. 

One of the generals to put his name 
on the silk flag at Aguas as a repre- 
sentative of Venustiano Carranza was 
Alfonso Santibanez. He had been a 
local jefe on Tehuantepec under Ma- 
dero and when the latter in the course 
of his appointments sent a successor, 
Santibanez killed him and took to the 
hills where as an active bandit he ac- 
quired further importance and quite a 
following. When General Jesus Car- 
ranza was sent to the Isthmus by his 
brother the First Chief, to secure its 
fealty, he sought out and " recog- 
nised " and attached to his army this 
Santibanez. 

A month or so later Santibanez 
changed his faith, captured General 
Jesus Carranza, and killed him. 

Thus the officers' viewpoint ; the sol- 
diers can hardly be expected to have 
one more elevated. 

While in Monterrey a friend told me 



The Revolutionary Hahit 25 

the story of his house servant who had 
joined the Constitutionalist army. 
The muchacho one day announced his 
intention of going to the front; the 
master said he was sorry to lose a good 
servant but pleased to see support for 
the constitutionalist cause coming vol- 
untarily from men of his class who 
should naturally be the ones most bene- 
fited by its success, and therefore 
among the first to enlist. " But," re- 
plied the servant, " I am not sure I shall 
join the constitutionalists." " Not the 
constitutionalists," exclaimed my friend 
in astonishment, " what army is there 
then that you would join?" "Well," 
answered the patriot, " the constitu- 
tionalists here are offering one peso 
fifty, but I hear that Pluerta is offering 
one seventy-five to recruits, and before 
I join I am going to learn who pays the 
most." And neither this man nor any 
of many similar cases encountered in 
my travels among the Villistas, the Car- 
ranzistas, or other istas, saw anything 
in such an attitude not entirely becom- 
ing a loyal member in good standing of 
a " delicate, sensitive race." 

At a mine near San Luis I met a 
man who had deserted from General 



26 Whafs the Matter 'with Mexico? 

Angeles because the officers had " de- 
ceived " him. When he was lured from 
a good place with one of the American 
mining companies, and recruited, he had 
been promised a chance at looting in 
the captured towns ; but no towns had 
been captured — so he had run away. 

At Jalapa I talked with another who 
had deserted the Blanco brigade be- 
cause, as he said, the officers took all 
the best horses and loot for themselves ; 
he was planning at that time to join 
the Jesus Carranza command where he 
heard the men w^re given a " fairer " 
share. 

During the uncertain time at Tam- 
pico between the going of the Federals 
and the coming of the Pablo Gonzales 
troops, there was a lot of free-for-all 
looting, or, shall I say, the taking of 
anything which for the moment ap- 
peared unemployed; in a word, any- 
thing not nailed down. So the horse 
belonging to a foreign resident disap- 
peared. One day after the Constitu- 
tionalists had settled into undisputed 
possession of the town, the owner of the 
lost animal discovered it hitched as one 
of a public coach pair. He claimed 
and finally, after much difficulty and 



The Revolutionary Habit 27 

with the good offices of his Consul, 
came again into possession of it. But 
the hackman could not at all under- 
stand why he should be deprived of a 
horse he had " found " in the fields 
while he was serving his jefe, and swore 
vengeance on those who were instru- 
mental in taking from him property he 
had acquired, legitimately, so far as he 
could see. The man was entirely sin- 
cere. 

In Mexico City I was presented to a 
colonel of the Carranza army, who 
three years before had been a motor- 
man on the city trolley line. At the 
time I talked with him, at the house of 
a native with whom I was studying 
Spanish, he had amassed a house in the 
city, two pianos — of which he spoke 
with especial pride — good clothes, and 
an automobile. He had been a pelado ; 
now he was a senor with a capital S. 
One ranch peon who joined the army 
and was in the fighting and looting at 
Durango, shortly thereafter bought a 
ranch in his own State, Chihuahua, for 
twenty thousand pesos. Is it to won- 
der that the army is popular with cer- 
tain types of Mexicans? The wonder 
is whether these men are going to re- 



28 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

turn to the trolley, and the ranch, and 
the mine when present opportunity 
ends. 

When Obregon and Blanco made 
their get-away from Mexico City in 
November, 1914, leaving the city as 
tliey thought to the expected looting of 
Zapata, the troop trains stood amidst 
literal lanes of household goods taken 
by the departing patriots from the con- 
fiscated houses of their fellow country- 
men ; and all the Mexicans' luxuries 
from typewriters to phonographs and 
pianos and sewing machines could be 
picked up at bargains when it became 
known that there were not enough cars 
to carry away all the loot which had 
been taken in the name of " uplift." 
Two days after Blanco had skulked out 
of the city, I counted sixteen automo- 
biles destroyed or mutilated beyond re- 
pair in a field seven miles from town 
where they had been abandoned by him 
and Obregon. 

These soldiers of the army are not 
concerned with the principles of de- 
mocracy; they have neither interest in 
nor knowledge of the problems of a re- 
public ; it matters not who happens to 
be first chief ; their interest is in having 



The Revolutionary Habit S9 

a chance at getting something for noth- 
ing. It is not that they are so vicious 
as that they are so ignorant, and the 
blood they have inherited makes for 
lustful adventuring. They are having 
such a fling at " liberty " as they have 
never known in their impoverished and 
more or less oppressed lives. 

The Huerta soldiers that defended 
Chihuahua under General Mercado 
against Villa's assaults, joined Villa in 
considerable numbers when he came into 
the city triumphant. The men on the 
border constantly shifted from Car- 
ranza to Villa or back again according 
to varying fortunes and local condi- 
tions. The men of Gonzales deserted 
him by the score when he was driven 
out, and entered the Villa ranks. Villa 
lost officers and men right along at such 
points as he was compelled to evacuate, 
and after his heavy defeat, in a trap 
by Obregon at Celaya owing to his im- 
petuous and overconfident advance, the 
desertions from his ranks were large 
enough to weaken him seriously. Both 
Blanco and Obregon lost heavily in de- 
sertions to General Angeles when they 
retreated before his advance. Miners 
throughout Chihuahua who were thrown 



30 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

out of work by the shutting down of 
the foreign properties, joined the 
forces of Madero, then those of Or- 
ozco when he fought Madero, then 
Huerta, who fought both Madero and 
Orozco, and finally were to be found 
under the banners of Villa and Car- 
ranza. 

Then there is the well established 
story of Veracruz, where the Federal 
gunboat officer who switched fealty 
from Madero to Felix Diaz and back 
again to Madero, explained his most 
recent change to some very good Amer- 
ican friends at a dinner on the ground 
of being a patriot in doubt as to which 
side was going to win and, said he, 
" how can one be a patriot if he is on 
the losing side? " 

Of all the Government military offi- 
cers at the National Palace on that 
morning of February 8, 1913, which 
ushered in the fateful conspiracy 
against Madero, only General Lauro 
Villar and his valiant little group re- 
mained actively loyal. They managed 
to hold the Palace but the troops which 
had promised to keep faith, went over 
to Mondragon after being harangued 
by his officer, Colonel Aguillon. 



The Revolutionary Habit 31 

Although Madero's Plan particu- 
larly urged that soldiers must not 
" sack any town or kill defenceless pris- 
oners," the dreadful slaughter of three 
hundred Chinamen at Tor r eon, 1911, 
by the troops under his brother Emilio, 
and the looting and barbarous conduct 
at Durango, Zacatecas, and elsewhere, 
showed the little influence of his appeal 
either while he lived or with the gen- 
erals who espoused his cause after he 
had been murdered. When carrying 
out his idea of democracy Madero dis- 
banded twenty thousand of his army 
after taking the presidential chair, 
most of whom had fought for the 
opportunity to loot, they at once 
■flocked to the standards of his oppo- 
nents. 

When Felix Diaz was captured by 
General Valdez on his stupid and un- 
successful attempt at Vera Cruz to 
start a cuartelazo against Madero, his 
soldiers promptly shouted for his cap- 
tor and returned allegiance to the Gov- 
ernment which a few moments before 
they had been ready to fight. 

General Reyes, who had been a sup- 
porter of General Porfirio Diaz with 
sword in hand ready to quell Madero, 



32 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

became subsequently a follower of Ma- 
dero and then headed a revolt to un- 
seat him. 

Francisco Vasquez Gomez was Ma- 
dero's chief of the Washington junta 
— his board bill paid by the Madero 
family ; and after Madero was elected 
he joined a revolt against him. 

Orozco, the red handed, who had 
fought for Madero, started a revolu- 
tion in favour of himself after Made- 
ro's election, because Madero, after 
giving him one hundred thousand re- 
fused to give him another one hundred 
and fifty thousand pesos he demanded 
as his share for patriotically helping to 
" free " Mexico. 

Huerta, when found to be short over 
one million pesos of the money Madero 
had sent him for his campaign against 
Orozco, was raised to a major general- 
ship. 

Such are the workings of the Mex- 
ican mind and habit ; such the rule of 
revolution as we have more often seen 
it. Constitutional government as the 
excuse for leaders to exercise the pro- 
fession of politics — politics, the open 
sesame to the grab bag. Apart from 
the few high minded, loyal Mexicans, 



The Revolutionary Habit QS 

for whom jail has been the usual re- 
ward of constancy, patriotism has 
served as a mere phrase and a cloak to 
hide the opportunist. 

The Juarez breed of patriot has just 
about run out. Not a single Mexican 
civilian among all he had befriended 
went to the support of Porfirio Diaz 
after his thirty-six years of reign ; not 
that they were righteous, but they were 
Mexicans. When Madero in the bit- 
terness of his awakening to the changed 
sentiment around him, called upon the 
law and abiding citizens for help, only 
one man responded — an American of 
Irish extraction, Braniff by name. And 
when Carranza came to Mexico City in 
August, 1914, Carranza, the " aveng- 
er " of ^ladero, he turned the American 
mother of Braniff out of her house and 
handed it over to his General Obregon 
for headquarters. 

The jefe of one little town during 
the IMadero-Orozco revolution, raided 
another small town — Aldaman — 
driving off the defenders and then ap- 
propriating everything that could be 
carried away from the shops and the 
houses of the people whose misfortune 
it was that two rival bands had hap- 



64 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

pencd to use their little settlement for 
a battleground. 

An Englishman who had a ranch 
nearby and chanced to be in the town, 
asked the looting jefe what it was all 
about, why he fought and robbed these 
people who had taken no part in the 
battle or the controversy and done him 
no harm. "A just cause," replied the 
jefe. " Yes, I know," persisted the 
Englishman, "but what is it about .'^ 
iYou destroy and carry off the crops 
of your fellow countrj^men, you loot 
their stores, you misuse their wives and 
daughters, what's the reason, why do 
you do this?" *' A just cause, and 
that's all I'll say, a just cause," replied 
the jefe; and that was all the English- 
man could get out of him. And it is 
about all I was ever able to get out of 
any Mexican high or low who indorsed 
the riot of anarchy. 

A riot of anarchy, a riot unre- 
strained and atrocious in deed — fit- 
tingly describes the activities of the 
revolutionists of this last " passion for 
peace " explosion, whether under Ma- 
dero, Huerta, Villa, or Carranza. 
Zapata, despite his reputation — out- 
side of Mexico — to the contrary, has 



The Revolutionary Habit 35 

the cleanest record. Mexico City had 
been awaiting his heralded approach in 
the autumn of 1914 with fear and 
trembling; the bars for the shop doors 
and windows had been reinforced in the 
hope of at least delaying the antici- 
pated looting of these " wild bandits." 
And when Zapata and his simple, bare- 
footed Indians finally did come to the 
City, they gave the residents the first 
unmolested period it had enjoyed up to 
that time, and the only fair treatment 
since Madero was killed. The Zapatis- 
tas confiscated no property, and pro- 
ceeded to restore to its owners as far 
as they were able, that which had been 
stolen by the Carranzistas. The City 
breathed at will and relaxed in smiles. 
Those who had successfully concealed 
their automobiles from Obregon and 
Blanco, rode through the streets 
bravely and happily. But the act of 
the Zapatistas which literally took 
breath away was their return of a fifty 
thousand peso loan which they had 
made on arrival and pending the levy- 
ing of one extra month's tax to meet 
the feeding of the soldiers. It was 
something unheard of in the history of 
revolution past or present. 



36 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? ] 

The usual procedure of a revolution- 
ist party upon successfully carrying a 
town, is to first search out the women; 
second, to loot ; third, to destroy. Such 
is the fight for " constitutional " gov- j 
ernment 1 Destruction and brutality 
visited upon their own harmless people ; 
and some of their exploits have been 
fiendish even in this day when " flaming 
fire " and gas and burning tar are the 
usual weapons of attack. 

Of the atrocities committed in North- 
western Mexico alone, I have eleven 
sheets of legal cap fully covered with 
brief statements — the longest being 
five lines — of murders, kidnapping, 
seizure of property, robbery, and ruth- 
less destruction of livestock ! 

When retreating from San Luis Po- 
tosi the Huerta federals shot from the 
car windows at whatever and whom- 
ever they saw, though luckily their 
marksmanship was poor. All along the 
line cattle were killed in this manner. 
On one occasion a vaqucro made an in- 
viting target and the train was actually 
stopped while a number of the soldiers 
tried to hit him before he rode out of 
range. 

It was the constitutional victors over 



The Revolutionary Habit 37 

this lot of Federals who on passing an 
oil pumping station impressed two of 
the workmen into guiding a group of 
soldiers to a certain point of their road. 
When they had reached their destina- 
tion they hung the two guides, whose 
graves I passed on my way through 
this section. 

One of the earliest successes of the 
Constitutionalists was at Durango un- 
der the leadership of a brute called Ur- 
bina, where the soldiers were given 
twenty-four hours' license to do as they 
pleased ! The story of the looting and 
the raping of that poor town will al- 
ways remain a disgrace to the consti- 
tutionalist general staff and soldiery. 
They pillaged the bank, they robbed 
the stores, they chased every comely 
face that dared venture onto the 
streets, and they stabled their horses 
in the parlours of the private houses. 

After passing through miles and 
miles of torn-up roadbed and twisted 
rails, demolished stations, and burned 
freight cars, I entered Zacatccas over 
the sunken road where Villa had 
trapped the retreating Federals and 
made the greatest killing of the war 
with his machine guns placed on the op- 



38 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

posite and commanding hillside. The 
town cowered. The priests had been 
stripped of whatever was to be found 
in their churches, and imprisoned; 
some of the shops had been looted; the 
officers were taking toll of such women 
as could not escape ; and the Supreme 
Court was being used as a stable for 
the horses of the officers. Zacatecas 
has good reason to remember its occu- 
pation by General Natera of the Army 
of the North. Money was raised by 
the imprisoned priests and some of 
them released with the advice to get 
out of the country — others are yet to 
be heard from. But the girls had no 
respite ; many of them were caught and 
violated ; none of them above the peon 
women who kept their little street 
stands of fruits and beans and corn, 
dared show her face at a window or 
venture out. The shops were closed 
and barred ; the people were existing on 
tunas — prickly pear of the cactus — 
the tow^n appeared as if in the grip of 
a pestilence which had laid low half the 
population and hushed the remainder. 

In the ancient little town of Guada- 
lupe lived a charitable old priest who 
at the time of the fighting that swirled 



The Revolutionary Hah'it 39 

around that section of the State con- 
verted the low, single story parish 
school building into a hospital. Here 
he had cared for such wounded as he 
could hear of or as dragged themselves 
to the doors of the settlement. One 
day a considerable party of passing 
Constitutionalists discovered the priest 
at his merciful task. Opening wide the 
door of the improvised hospital, as 
many as could do so rode into the house 
and over the wounded lying on the floor. 
Those who escaped trampling were in 
part taken out and shot. 

Early in the campaign against 
Hucrta a favourite plan of destruction 
with the constitutionalists took the 
form of djmamiting and it was through 
his diabolical success in this killing 
business that Gutierrez came first prom- 
inently before the revolutionary world. 
Previously he had been a roustabout 
at an American mining plant, but now 
he became a Carranza general, and later 
he was elected president by the Conven- 
tion at Agua Calientes. One of the 
most fruitful of these dynamite at- 
tacks was upon an ordinary Saltillo- 
San Luis Potosi passenger train in 
which, besides some Huerta soldiers, 



40 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

many second class passengers were 
killed and all the living first class 
robbed by Carranza soldiers lying in 
waiting. But an equally choice exhi- 
bition of revolutionist wreckage and 
fiendish spirit was that at Cumbre 
where an officer named Castillo wrecked 
the regular passenger train in the tun- 
nel and then fired it, among the passen- 
gers killed being fifteen Americans. 
Some time later this same Castillo was 
arrested on American soil by the bor- 
der authorities, and under instructions 
from Washington sent " for safety " to 
Cuba. Not long after he returned to 
Mexico and joined the constitutional- 
ists! 

From Chihuahua south all the way 
through the country east and west 
down to the Tehuantepec country, the 
story was the same or similar; some- 
times worse, sometimes not so bad, but 
always the tale of forced loans, of 
looted property, of outraged women. 
The atrocities committed upon the 
priests and the nuns would make a vol- 
ume of themselves. Everywhere out- 
rages had been committed against 
Americans but in no one town so varied 
or so many as at Durango. 



The Revolutionary Habit 41 

With a friend, an American who 
knows Mexico and the Mexican and is 
their very good and comprehending 
amigo — I had gone over beyond Atzca- 
potzalco one early morning of Novem- 
ber, 1914, to visit Viha, who had ar- 
rived the night before from the North. 
On the road we met a Mexican mer- 
chant who was on intimate terms with 
my companion, and we journeyed on 
together. Both my friend and I who 
had watched the " dreaded " Zapatis- 
tas come into Mexico City, and had cir- 
culated much among them, were unani- 
mous in our praise of their conduct. 
My friend grew eloquent in Spanish ex- 
tolling the Zapatista soldiers for ask- 
ing bread, instead of confiscating it, as 
the recently departed Carranzista sol- 
diers had done. We thought it an en- 
couraging sign of their honesty and 
their sincerity of purpose. But the 
merchant said contemptously " poor 
fools, they know no better." 

He correctly expressed the Mexican 
spirit. He could not commend, he 
could not, indeed, understand the hesi- 
tation to take when opportunity of- 
fered. The German idea of might is 
right appeals to this kind of Mexican; 



4j^ Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

lie understands that. He simply can- 
not understand respect for the rights 
and the property of another when a 
man has the might and is above the law, 
as are the battling factions in Mexico. 



The, Submerged 80 Per Cent. 

HAVING had a view of the mixed 
native and the Indian under the 
hcense of revolution and the undisci- 
pline of the " army," let us see him 
in the rough or normal, always remem- 
bering the class divisions — the In- 
dians, the mixed peon class, the mixed 
half-educated class (from whom and 
the educated politician-lawyer-doctor 
class, come the trouble makers) the 
merchant, and the capitalistic class. 

It must be confessed that the half 
breed either in or out of the army 
either of the lower or the middle mixed 
class is the more complex and the least 
amenable, but, except on occasions, not 
the despicable man tourists so often 
paint him. He is merely Mexican, and 
that means he is a contradiction of vir- 
tues and faults, a victim of fanaticism 
and illusion, easy to manage and to get 
on with if you allow for his foibles and 
vanities. He is courteous, suspicious, 

hospitable, not courageous as we under- 

43 



44 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

stand courage, yet holds his life 
cheaply. He does not comprehend and 
has no respect for easy tolerance in his 
employer. Madero, according to Mex- 
ican ideas, erred in not condemning to 
death General Reyes and Felix Diaz 
when he had them in his power after 
their attempted insurrection. Because 
he did not shoot them, the people called 
him weak. 

Although his money comes to him 
slowly and through patient toil, he 
values it but slightly and will make 
little effort to add to it or keep it. 

Perhaps a personal experience will 
illustrate their happy-go-lucky atti- 
tude. 

I had finished my inspection of Zaca- 
tecas and was planning to break 
through the Villa and Carranza lines 
which faced each other near Agua Cali- 
entes, and so make my way on south. 
Transportation was at a premium with 
the railroad held by the military and 
all the horses confiscated. High and 
low I hunted for something on four 
legs, without success. Finally I found 
an old fellow at Guadalupe, seven miles 
south, who had a kind of stage and 
some mules which the Villistas had not 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 45 

thought worth taking. He agreed to 
help me for forty pesos, which was 
about twice the ordinary tariff, and I 
accepted. At six o'clock the next 
morning he was at my door in Zaca- 
tecas, and in a few moments we were 
on our way. When we reached his 
house at Guadalupe he changed mules, 
and having taken his seat again, turned 
and asked me to pay him. I of course 
declined to pay in advance; said I was 
willing to prove my good faith by pay- 
ing him half now and the remainder 
when I reached my destination ; that my 
luggage was worth at least the with- 
held balance should I be shot on the 
road or fail to fulfil my obligation. 

We argued the point in strict accord 
with the Mexican custom, i.e. back 
and forth and in and out and then all 
over again, while the mules stood doz- 
ing In the sun and their owner alter- 
nately rolled cigarettes and told his 
collected family and the gathered at- 
tentive community, the dreadful thing 
I was trying to do to him. Finally, 
after two hours by the watch, I took 
the stand that he could either accept 
twenty pesos now and drive on to 
Aguas where I should pay him twenty 



46 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

pesos more, or he could take me back to 
Zacatecas. " Bueno," said he, and 
back we started over the seven dust}^ 
rock strewn miles. By the time we re- 
entered the town at noon, my sense of 
humour, as I recalled the scene at 
Guadalupe and all the ridiculous arti- 
fices he had employed to bring me to 
his terms, had got the better of my 
anger and disappointment at not get- 
ting on my way, and so I asked him as 
we stopped at the hotel, how much I 
owed him for the scenic drive to Guad- 
alupe and back, not to mention the rare 
opportunity he had afforded me of be- 
coming acquainted with him and his 
numerous and good looking family. 
He beamed, and then " Nada sefior, 
nada," said he with such unaffected 
suavity that forthw^ith I bought out a 
little street dulce vendor and told him 
to take it all home to his family with 
my appreciative compliments for a very 
pleasant and instructive morning. 
And that was no lie. Twenty-one 
miles of driving, the use of four mules, 
of an entire morning, — and " Por 
nada, senor ; adios ! " 

At Del Rio was a station restaurant 
which gave the best food along the rail- 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 47 

road. Once after paying for my meal 
I had bought cigarettes and matches 
amounting to twenty centavos. I had 
only a peso and the proprietor had no 
change. " Take them along," said he, 
" and pay me another day when you 
are passing ! " 

In a restaurant at Jimenez my 
breakfast amounted to fifty centavos. 
I gave the waiter a peso and he re- 
turned me two twenty-five centavo 
pieces. Wishing to give him a tip of 
fifteen centavos I asked him to make 
the change, and as he could not get it 
in the house, suggested his going next 
door. But he shrugged his shoulders 
as he said, " Gracious, senor, otra vez " 
: — another time. 

They are full of emotion, but lack 
the first principles of consideration. 
Scarcely a household that does not have 
its pets, yet the men ride and treat 
their horses cruelly. They are full of 
polite phrases, prolific with presents, 
yet lack comprehension of loyalty, 
gratitude, team work. They cultivate 
flowers and they have good music ; 
everywhere is the evidence of both. 
Even along the railroad in the freight- 
car homes of the peons you will see 



48 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

hardly a one which does not have its 
tomato or kerosene cans of potted 
plants ; and every small town has its 
own most excellent band. People so 
kindly to their children — children so 
happy with so little — and so fond of 
flowers and music have qualities which 
promise much with development. 

Until they have had the benefit of 
training under the foreigner their sense 
of responsibility appears to be as vague 
as that of a child. 

Once I travelled on a train of freight 
cars carrying a company of soldiers 
to Irapuato. The track had been but 
recently and roughly laid and fre- 
quently we came to sudden and unex- 
pected dips into and out of shallow 
little gullies where the destroyed bridge 
had not been replaced. We kept, 
nevertheless, at a breakneck speed; the 
box car rocking so violently it seemed 
as if every minute must be our last on 
the rails as we swayed from side to side 
and lurched into and were jerked out 
again of the " shoo-fly's " — as such 
improvised crossings are, I believe, 
called in railroad parlance. 

An anxious trainman in our car, who 
probably had seen better railroad days. 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent, 49 

put on the emergency brake ; and when 
the train came to a stop and the cause 
was discovered, that conservative train- 
man was arrested by the indignant mili- 
tary officer in charge and held under 
guard in the corner of the car until we 
reached the end of our exciting, not to 
say perilous journey. 

On another occasion on another 
troop train we were coming down a stiff 
and winding grade from Cardenas, 
having to stop every now and again to 
clear the* track of obstructing rocks 
and dirt that had either slid down from 
the mountain side or been blasted there 
by some of the neighbouring " other 
constitutionalists." Between these halts 
the train pitched forward at so lively 
a pace that I found a seat in the open 
doorway of the box car preferable to 
being tossed around inside of it from 
floor to ceiling. 

On one of our sprints towards what 
appeared like a jumping off place, the 
engineer at his post and the conductor 
at my side entered upon a hilarious 
duel of badinage, the engineer leaning 
from his cab window, munching a ba- 
nana which he brandished at us, shout- 
ing and laughing with apparently no 



50 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

thought of what we might encounter as 
we sped on around the sharp curve. 

Their attitude towards what we call 
honesty, is a curious one and to us 
quite incomprehensible without a com- 
plete knowledge of their character and 
a sympathetic study of the environ- 
ment under which it has been developed. 
In the matter of private engagements, 
as servant, foreman, or boss, on the 
ranch, in the mine, on the oil field, in 
the factory, in the machine shop, they 
have shown both honesty and loyalty, 
where trusted; but you must show that 
you do trust them or they are sure to 
prove doubt well founded. They have 
been found over and again in these 
troublous times entirely dependable by 
many Americans w^ho have been com- 
pelled to leave their property in their 
sole charge. My feeling is always that 
if you give a square deal to the average 
decent ^Mexican of this class he will not 
fail you in a position of trust; such at 
least has been the experience of many 
foreigners in Mexico. 

But they do not trust each other. 
Among themselves there is little if any 
reliabilit}^, because they lack the faith 
in one another that they have in the 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 51 

American, who they know by experience 
keeps his word and pays his bills. 
That is the crux of the matter; you 
must keep faith with them — especially 
with the Indians. Many are the in- 
stances where the servants and the em- 
ployes of the master or the company, 
have saved property from the looting 
soldiers. 

An ex-Boer who had served his cause 
with valour and distinction, told me at 
his hacienda that his major-domo, in 
whom he placed the utmost trust, was 
yet not on an equal footing of trust 
with his own family consisting of wife 
and daughter, also employed in the 
house. Each of the three had a key to 
the family strong box, but none was 
ever permitted to go to it without the 
other two being present. 

A boy of fourteen employed on an 
American property near Victoria was 
taken off with an automobile confis- 
cated by Carranzistas. The roads 
were heavy and the car stalled, where- 
upon the soldiers, having neither me- 
chanical knowledge nor patience, 
abandoned it and continued their 
journey, taking the youngster with 
them. Next day, however, the lad 



52 What's the Matter with Mexico? 

escaped, hid in the busli, made his way 
back to the stranded car when the 
coast was clear, finally extricated it, 
and returned to his company four days 
later. 

In Oaxaca an English mine super- 
intendent pointed out an Indian he had 
been sending alone every month for 
several years with two thousand dollars 
on a four day journey to the mines; 
and, he added, that although the man 
might, as others did, take a few cen- 
tavos from a fellow worker, yet he had 
always fulfilled the trust the company 
reposed in him to the very last centavo. 

A merchant in Mexico City, a 
Frenchman with a large native trade, 
told me that in eighteen years of busi- 
ness he had not lost $2,000. Mexicans 
take a long time to pay, he said, but do 
pay their bills. 

If you stop to buy at one of the 
many little street stands or of the 
pedlar along the road, he, or more 
likely she, appears to take an actual 
interest in your getting your money's 
worth, picking out the biggest, or the 
best conditioned, or the most highly 
decorated of her stock. 

Public office or position in a semi- 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 53 

public capacit}^, on the other hand, ap- 
pears to be regarded not so much as 
a trust as an opportunity. 

I recall a meeting with the well- 
educated and intelligent son of a dis- 
tinguished Mexican who had given his 
country long and valued service, being 
responsible, among other similar tasks 
under the Diaz administration, for the 
erection of a very large and complete 
group of public-service buildings. 
Commenting on these, I referred espe- 
cially to the superiority of their ap- 
pointments and the thoroughness of 
their equipment. " Ah," said the son, 
" there was a chance ! Had I been 
older at the time those buildings were 
given my father to supervise, I would 
have feathered the family nest, as my 
father failed to do ; but I was too 
young and my father was too honest." 

The train carrying refugees out of 
Jalisco State to Manzanillo, stopped 
just outside of Guadalajara, where it 
was boarded by the Chief of Police of 
that city, who in full uniform went 
through the train making a thorough 
collection of all the moneys the pas- 
sengers had. Even Madero with his 
education and his higher ideals could 



54i What's the Matter zcith Mexico? 

not restrain the hereditary instinct of 
the man in power to milk the public 
cow. At Saltillo in the State of Coa- 
huila, where Carranza was governor 
before he became revolutionist, I found 
two inspectors on the trolley line, in 
addition to the conductor for every 
car; three men on the ticket job. 

When I visited Zapata, his chief of 
staff exhibited some recently coined 
money, saying, with a considerable show 
of pride, that we " at great sacrifice 
have made silver pesos for our peo- 
ple." The money in question had been 
made out of the bullion Zapata had con- 
fiscated from the Ortiz mine ! 

A German had a ranch in the San 
Luis country and decided to put in 
modern machinery in order to utilise 
the first grade of his workmen, while 
he kept also the old plant going for the 
second grade men. He picked out the 
best of his peons, all of whom were 
being paid one peso a day; these he 
broke in on the new machinery and 
gradually increased their wages until 
finally they were getting two pesos and 
a half. The strange new plant, the 
learning, etc., kept the men interested, 
and diligent, but with the novelty gone 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 55 

and more than double the money com- 
ing in than they had been used to re- 
ceiving, they began to lay off for a few- 
days at a time. Places of amusement 
were provided in an effort to hold them ; 
a shop with articles at merely the cost 
and freight price was opened that they 
might spend their money where they 
would not be robbed, and everything 
done to keep them happy ; for they were 
desirable workmen, and the employer 
was a widely known friend of the Mex- 
ican, whom he understood and encour- 
aged to better things. Finally, how- 
ever, these men began to strike; then 
came trouble, another strike, and at 
last they quit. After loafing around 
until their money was exhausted, they 
went to work on an adjoining hacienda 
for seventy-five centavos a day ! 

They are quick to take offence, to 
fly into ungovernable passion, and to 
violent action. Yet generally they are 
to be handled if you go at it the right 
way, despite the untoward experience 
of the San Luis haciendado. You 
must see their point of view, generally 
very difficult to find, be patient, gentle, 
but firm when there is need. You 
must never bluff, or permit yourself 



56 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

to be bluffed ; above all you must never 
employ empty threats, otherwise both 
their respect and your control are 
gone. In a word you must consider 
their mental calibre and their under 
development. They are prone to riot, 
but such breaks can usually be checked 
if you are on the ground at the very 
start — and to know the christian 
names of some of them is most helpful 
on such an occasion. 

A mine manager in the Santa Eulalia 
district had an experience very much 
in point. The mine was shut down for 
the greater part but the company kept 
open all the time one or another of its 
extensions, using alternately different 
gangs that all in camp might get a 
little work. It was money out of 
pocket for the company of course, but 
it was giving their men enough to keep 
body and soul together w^hile their com- 
patriots went on wrecking the country. 
For several days the men had been 
gathering in loud talking little groups 
during noon hour and generally show- 
ing the sullen symptoms which presage 
a demonstration. Some of the consti- 
tutionalist recruiting agents had also 
recently visited the section with their 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent, 57 

highly coloured stories of the " extra " 
(loot) to be made in army service, and 
the poison apparently had begun to 
work. 

At this inauspicious moment it hap- 
pened that the local jefe embargoed the 
ore tramway connecting with the rail- 
road, for one of the thousand and one 
untenable excuses local jefes are ever 
in these days creating as an effective 
first aid to the extraction of the for- 
eigner peso. As this cut off means of 
delivery to the mill the manager shut 
down the gang on the shaft hoist. 

This was the opportunity of the mal- 
contents and the announcement was a 
signal for general disturbance on the 
property. Demands were made not 
only that the hoist be started but every 
extension opened, and all the men be 
set to work. It looked like a riot, but 
the manager had lived twenty years in 
Mexico and knew his people. He 
called a meeting and after a short gen- 
eral talk on the situation finished by 
saying: "This trouble is yours as 
well as ours ; you and I are in the same 
boat. We want to help each other to 
live and we can't because your jefe 
won't let us. Now I want you to help 



58 Whafs the Matter imtli Mexico? 

me, so that I can help you. I want 
you Juan, and you Miguel, and you 
Jose to come with me as representing 
these miners here, to the jefe and ask 
him to give us all a chance to do what 
we want to do." 

That was the end of the riot ; the sop 
to their vanity in the selection of sev- 
eral of their own number — so favour- 
ably regarded as to be called by their 
christian names — was the counter 
irritant to the Villa recruiting agent. 
The jefe was visited, made the cus- 
tomary impassioned speech to the men 
of his devotion to their interests and to 
the revolutionary cause, received one 
hundred pesos from the manager " on 
the quiet," and the camp settled again 
to its revolutionary times jog, to wait 
for the opening of the main line and a 
chance to do something towards paying 
expenses. 

Normally the Indian, as distin- 
guished from the pelado of the mixed 
blood, is an even dispositioned, 
credulous, hospitable, philosopher, ab- 
solutely without self-consciousness. A 
soldier carrying his baby on his back 
and his rifle on his arm, his woman fol- 
lowing, was no uncommon sight in 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent, 59 

Mexico when Zapata had control of 
the City ; and time after time have I 
had one of these approach with hat off 
and ask for a few centavos for food — 
this Indian with his rifle in hand and 
his body hung about with belts of 
cartridges, who had the power to walk 
into any shop and help himself as the 
constitutionalist soldiers of the mixed 
blood had done before him. 

In any city in Mexico you may see 
the Indian in rags and holes moving 
among the best dressed without slight- 
est thought of any difference between 
their clothes and his ; he goes everj^- 
where unembarrassed. He accepts 
death, the loss of money, the smallpox, 
as a visitation for occult reasons to 
him unfathomable. 

As illustrating how cheaply he holds 
life, Alfred B. Mason, one time rail- 
road engineer engaged in the Tehuan- 
tepec country, tells a story out of his 
own experience. Mr. Mason was sit- 
ting in his car at the end of the track 
when he saw three rurales come riding 
out of the jungle, each leading a bound 
peon at the end of a rope, with a 
sobbing woman following on behind. 
Asking the trouble the explanation was 



60 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

made to him that, " one peon " whom 
we will call A " had quarrelled with 
B about the woman. So A hired C to 
kill B, paying him his price, a whole 
peso, fifty cents in our money (at that 
time) in advance. C did not know B 
by sight. So C hired D for a quarter 
of the peso to point out B. This done 
C knifed B. The rurales had gathered 
in A, C, and D, and the woman in the 
case." 

As he Is reckless of his own life so 
he is wanton in the destruction of other 
life when a latent cupidity is developed 
or his hatred engendered. He is more 
unmoral than immoral, more uncivilised 
than either. He is ready to serve, or 
to build or to destroy, according to the 
temper of those that lead him. 

The excuses made by the constitu- 
tionalist leaders for the promiscuous 
killing of noncombatants, and the 
fiendish atrocities visited upon the cap- 
tured towns, that their soldiers '' got 
out of hand," are discredited by the 
character of the Mexican, who is in 
truth the most easily influenced and 
easiest guided man in all the Americas. 
It's the leaders, from the top down 
through all the long list of looting and 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent, 61 

butchering generals, that are respon- 
sible for Mexico's outrages and must be 
held so before the world. These are the 
generals that declaim so earnestly about 
the " foul foreign hand " that has 
" robbed our poor people," and who 
are stealing from them with both hands 
at this very hour of my writing. From 
the mixed class come these officers — 
not the self-respecting well established 
middle class — that class which fur- 
nishes also the most offensive, most 
deceitful, and untrustworthy creature 
on earth. These are the trouble 
makers ; the men who hunt in packs 
like coyotes ; the revolver carrying 
braggarts of the towns, who bully the 
" submerged " of their countrymen for 
whose " uplift " they are reported to 
be so concerned. 

In a Chihuahua restaurant I sat on 
a stool at the counter next to an officer 
who pulled his gun on the waiter be- 
cause the latter was slow bringing the 
coffee. At Puebla before a saloon full 
I saw an officer force at gun point the 
bartender to deliver him champagne 
without pay. On a train I saw an un- 
armed servitor shot by his officer- 
master for not getting some bottles of 



62 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

beer at a station where we had stopped. 

The revolution has raised to unac- 
customed importance and authority all 
kinds of low born, ignorant men who 
naturally do not know how to use their 
new power and make it the medium of 
domineering over their men and of vain- 
glorious display in their little world. 

At Rodriguez I came into personal 
contact with one such officer who was 
entraining his men for Monterrey. 
The summer before he had driven the 
threshing machine on a large ranch 
some fiftj miles to the north. Now as 
I beheld him he was a full fledged colonel 
with about two hundred and fifty men 
ununiformed and variously armed. 
But the colonel was uniformed for the 
entire outfit. He wore the usual 
steeple crown hat heavily laden with 
silver trimming around band and brim ; 
silver braiding full two inches wide ran 
the length of his trouser seams and 
around the collar and cufFs of his 
flannel shirt. His saddle and bridle 
were without ornament — he probably 
hadn't yet caught any one owning 
better — and he was mounted on a 
scrawny little horse which he continu- 
ously prodded with enormous spurs to 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 6S 

make it simulate the spirit the poor 
beast obviously lacked; he carried a 
rifle, a pearl-handled revolver, and a 
dagger. 

For no visible purpose except to ex- 
hibit himself, he kept riding up and 
down and around and over and through 
his men and everything and evervbodv 
that happened to be within or near the 
only approach to the train which he 
had exempted for a show ring. He ap- 
peared to find greatest joy in swinging 
his horse into a group of onlookers and 
scattering them in consternation. 

I had put down my blanket and 
saddle bags somewhat apart from the 
field of his cavorting, at the end of the 
troopers. I had shown no interest in 
his performance and perhaps that 
piqued the colonel, for on a sudden he 
came rushing and buck-jumping his 
much overworked nag across my blan- 
ket where, a few moments before, I had 
been half reclining and smoking. He 
seemed much pleased with the exploit, 
as did all the native spectators, so I 
returned to my blanket to dispute an- 
other sally, which however he did not 
make although he circled around me a 
number of times. 



64} What's the Matter with Mexico? 

The incident is so typical of the 
simple, vain nature of this new crop of 
generals and others in authority under 
the new order of things, that I have 
been tempted to recite the otherwise 
foolish little story. 

The Mexican dearly loves a " demon- 
stration " ; it matters not if he has 
personal ground or impulse, or even if 
cause be entirely wanting; he simply 
wants to do something — to parade, to 
caper, to yell. 

During a patriotic demonstration in 
Guadalajara a newsboy ran alongside 
the automobile of an English friend of 
mine, crying, " Mueran los gringos " 
(Kill the gringos). " Why do you say 
that? " called the Englishman, who was 
a patron of the young man and knew 
him well. " Oh, just for the yelling," 
shouted back the lad as he went on up 
the street indulging in the popular and 
national pastime. In this engaging 
game of " showing off " the automobile 
is a wonderful new instrument ; it has 
speed and noise, and the half breed 
adores both. Particularly he enjoys 
the horn and presses the button on 
smallest excuse that the lowly pedes- 
trian may gaze enviously upon him as 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. ' 

u 

he speeds furiously past, mufflers wld 
open — just like a certain " new " type 
in our own country. But of all demon- 
strations, the Mexican is at his best 
on horseback. He loves to make his 
mount prance and rear for the admira- 
tion of beholders, or, racing wildly 
through a crowded street, to pull up 
short before the shrinking, terror- 
stricken women at the crossing. 

As a whole he is not a disturber of 
the peace, and the tranquillity of 
Mexico City during the interval be- 
tween the going of the Carranzistas and 
the coming of the Zapatistas in No- 
vember, 1914, is an eloquent tribute to 
their generally peaceful disposition. 
Obregon and Blanco had been detailed 
to hold the city while the Carranzistas 
were rejoining their First Chief who 
had led the advance in the retreat be- 
fore Villa. Both Obregon and Blanco 
had warned the city of the ravages sure 
to be committed upon the success of 
Zapata in the sporadic fighting which 
was at that time within hearing. And, 
having issued fervid manifestos of devo- 
tion to their protection and loyalty to 
the cause of the people, those valiant 
generals, Obregon first, Blanco follow- 



64 > Whafs the Matter mtli Mexico? 

'ng, deserted the city, leaving it, as 
si they had said and no doubt believed, 
/ to the looting of the Zapatistas. 

During this interval while the city 
was without even its police, who had 
been taken away by the considerate 
Obregon and Blanco, another American 
and I wandered all over that quarter 
where the very poor and the pelados 
and the turbulent element lives, without 
having the smallest personal annoyance 
and without seeing any indication of 
disturbance. There was literally noth- 
ing to prevent riot or looting, the City 
was at the mercy of its worst element, 
as Obregon and Blanco intended it 
should be — for they both returned 
hatred for the City which held them in 
contempt — yet there was at no time 
sign of disquiet. To my mind that 
constitutes a highly credible record for 
a city of five hundred thousand, and 
sufficiently answers the excuse of the 
constitutionalist generals that they 
" could not control " their men. I re- 
peat what I have already said: the 
Mexican people are the easiest led and 
the easiest controlled of any people on 
this continent. 

And there is no more fitting place 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 67 

than here to say, that in all my wan- 
derings over the face of the earth I 
have yet to find a land where a smile 
and a courteous word gets you so far 
as it does in Mexico ; among el pueblo, 
the great undeveloped mass of Mexico's 
fifteen millions, mind you, not among 
the politicians who fatten upon their 
ready credulity, or among the orators 
and " patriots " that hypnotise official 
Washington, or among the underbred 
and lawless leaders of the revolution. 
During seven months' knocking about 
the country in revolution, in all my de- 
liberate seeking out of the low and 
crowded sections of the cities, I was not 
once jostled ; I never had any one bump 
into me even on Avenida de San Fran- 
cisco with its slowly moving crowd of 
idlers ; I never had any one tread on 
my feet in the unbelievably crammed 
and unsteadily running railway cars ; 
among the pelados I always found po- 
liteness — it may not have been as deep 
as the heart but was at least agreeable 
and suggestive. Of course I am re- 
ferring to where and when revolutionist 
bands or the bandits were not operat- 
ing. The fortunes of war bring chance 
of a hold-up if you are riding across 



68 What's the Matter with Mexico? i 

country on a good horse — any old nag 
is a good horse these days — or of 
robbery if you leave yourself open to j 
it in town or out. But at any rate, a \ 
smile and " con su permiso " (with your 
permission) got me past all ordinary 
obstacles ; even through three sets of 
sentries that guarded the house and its 
passageways where Villa and Zapata 
had their first eventful meeting at 
Xochimilco. 

The drudging, trustworthy cargador 
all but staggering under his load; the 
labourer crossing the walk with un- 
wieldy plank atop, hi^ head; the criada 
sweeping down the steps; the conductor 
of the trolley ; the public cochero — 
all, every last one of them, prefaces his 
approach with " con su permiso." 
The elevator boy in the office building 
comes back to the fourth floor which 
you have passed unheeding, and, when 
you thank him, immediately responds 
with " por nada, seiior " (for nothing, 
sir) ; the boatman soliciting your pat- 
ronage which you withhold, says, 
" gracias " and " adios," — the salute 
friendly. 

An old man, unkempt, dirty, and in 
rags, sat in a doorway trying to roll 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent, 69 

a cigarette of a bit of newspaper. I 
stooped and handed him the remainder 
of a package from my pocket ; and his 
acknowledgment was courtly, no less. 

Nowhere does the soft, kind, compre- 
hending word turn wrath as it does in 
Mexico among these docile, polite, and 
very readily swayed grown-up children 
— for that's what they are. You must 
know them through long association, if 
you would manage them, you must be 
sympathetic, you must like them — as 
you will grow to do ; you must under- 
stand their natures and their point of 
view; consider their irresponsibility, 
their untrained condition, and know 
their strange inconsistency. 

For these people who are so kind to 
their children, so courteous to friend 
and stranger, who love flowers and 
music, are of the same class that stood 
around the burning bodies of the inno- 
cent victims of the Decena Tragica in 
February, 1913, laughing uproariously 
at the contortions of arms and legs as 
they twitched under the stimulation of 
the flames ; they are of the class from 
whom came the soldiers that looted the 
churches at Monterrey, wearing in 
their sombreros the picture of the 



70 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

sacred Guadalupe shrine while they 
burned the altars and its effigies ; of 
the same soldiers that under Emilio 
Madero at Torreon tied to horses and 
tore asunder literally limb by limb the 
wretched Chinamen who dared to resist 
the looting of their houses. These are 
the same that go into raptures over pet 
dogs — and let others feed them. 

Yet these, the Indians, the illiterate 
mixed class, particularly the Indians, 
are the most dependable people in 
Mexico. From these come the loyal 
servants, the trustworthy foremen, the 
sincere friends ; from these have come 
the strongest men Mexico has produced 
— Alvarez, Juarez, Diaz ; and of this 
great trio, Juarez was a full and Diaz 
a half blood Indian. 

I must sound my praise too of the 
women of these people — patient, en- 
during, devoted ; they nurse Mexico, 
they till Mexico, they feed Mexico, and 
God only knows the depths of the 
agony they are suffering for Mexico 
because of the fiendish laAvlessness of 
their half savage men whom their own 
country cannot and their big northern 
brother will not restrain. They are 
the commissariat of the army, following 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent. 71 

the soldiers with fortitude and doing 
their arduous duties efficiently, untir- 
ingly; the food scouts, cooks, and wash- 
erwomen ; the first and the last on the 
camping job; and on the road the least 
comfortably provided for, either pur- 
suing their vocations on top the box 
car, or resting on platforms fastened 
to the iron truss rods under the car. 
It was the criadas — house maids — 
that braved the street fusillade to bring 
food to the home during those tragic 
ten days while Huerta and Felix Diaz 
shot up the City of Mexico ; and of the 
several thousand innocent citizens 
killed through their perfidious compact, 
women furnished the greater pro- 
portion. 

And she gets small acknowledgment 
from her men. I recall an incident 
somewhat illustrative of masculine 
Mexican attitude generally. At Tlaca- 
lula on the way to Mitla I watched a 
middle aged man help his companion, 
a tottering white haired old woman, off 
the train. From her hands and arms 
he took her many bundles as she es- 
sayed the steps — a "moral" (grass 
woven bag) filled to the very top, a 
pottery jug, a roll of cloth, a paper 



7S Wliafs the Matter •with Mexico? 

wrapped parcel. When she was firmly 
on the ground, he handed them all back 
to her ; and then they two, she thus 
heavily laden, he with only his cane, 
walked down the platform and disap- 
peared around the corner — into a 
waiting coach, I hope. 

From Tecalco to Mexico City, one 
hundred miles or more, two sisters 
journeyed with a baby and a burro 
which they rode turn and turn about, 
to carry a much needed document to 
their feeble old father who earlier, while 
the train yet ran, had gone to the City 
hoping to free himself from some con- 
fiscatory measure of the Carranzistas. 
The paper delivered, one sister, the 
younger, and the burro remained with 
the father; the other with her baby 
walked back to keep her mother com- 
pany in the disrupted home. 

I take my hat off to these women of 
Mexico ; they will be the salvation of 
that distracted land ; meanwhile, like 
their English, French, and Belgian sis- 
ters in anguish, they are the spirit be- 
hind the best in their men. 

Between el pueblo, and the small well 
born and educated classes, there are 
the orators, the politicians, the social- 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent, 7 



o 



ists, and the soldiers of fortune, a class 
of parvenus risen by chance and not by 
merit, " ignorant and full of preten- 
sions," as Mme. de la Barca, who knew 
them so well, says in her very interest- 
ing memoirs. It is futile to argue with 
a Mexican of this class, — vain, boast- 
ful, obstinate and incompetent ; he has 
all the advantage of you at the very 
start, for he does not restrict himself to 
facts. How he proceeds in national 
matters has been thoroughly shoAvn by 
the patriots now occupying our atten- 
tion in Mexico, but perhaps an example 
of how Huerta sought to work up pub- 
lic opinion against America offers a 
good and typical illustration of the 
methods commonly employed as quite 
ethical. 

This unscrupulous traitor whose 
short reign was one of graft and terror, 
and whom the American Administra- 
tion wisely did not recognise, sent tele- 
grams throughout Mexico, after the 
landing at Veracruz, saying that 
the Naval School Cadets had sunk the 
United States battleship Louisiana; 
that the federal troops had captured 
El Paso, Brownsville, and San Antonio ; 
that the American soldiers at Vera- 



74? WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

cruz were outraging and slaughtering 
Mexican women and carrying babies 
around town on the points of their 
bayonets. This was all published 
widely in the Mexican newspapers, and 
the people believed it; just as they be- 
lieved that the United States troops 
left Veracruz in November, 1914, be- 
cause they had been ordered out by 
Carranza, whose manifesto, reeking 
with hot " patriotism " and high flown 
sentiment, " demanding the with- 
drawal " of the American soldiers, had 
been filling the native newspapers and 
the agitators' mouths throughout the 
country. And the same experience 
with the same result was repeated in 
1916 when the troops were withdrawn 
in Chihuahua State. 

And thus is " public opinion " fash- 
ioned in Mexico. 

On the night of the day President 
Wilson withdrew the American troops 
from Veracruz and thereby delivered 
Mexico and her tortured people over 
to anarchy, I stood with a crowd of 
natives listening to Obregon inveighing 
against the Americans and extolling the 
Carranzista officers who had done 
little else since they had come to Mex- 



The Submerged 80 Per Cent, 75 

ico City but to prey upon its inhabi- 
tants. I did not hear him utter a 
single appreciative word of what 
America had done for the constitution- 
alists ; I never heard while I was in 
Mexico, one officer, except Villa, 
acknowledge that the United States had 
helped them to get rid of Huerta or 
helped them at all, or express any 
thankfulness for any of the very ma- 
terial aid the Administration has given 
them first and last. During all the 
time the Carranzista brand of consti- 
tutionalists was in Mexico City during 
1914 it was permissible to raise the 
American flag only over the Brazilian 
Embassy where United States official 
business was cared for. 



The Man and the Job 
Diaz — Madero 

THIS was the country steeped in 
anarchy and this the people 
prone to revolt over whom Diaz became 
president in 1876; a people that had 
been fighting among themselves for 
leadership, with but a few years' respite 
under Juarez — another strong man 
— for fifty years. Both people and 
country were exhausted; the nation 
was bankrupt, industry slept, the mail 
travelled by coach, and the land 
swarmed with bandits. 

Diaz sought to build, to bring peace 
and the plenty which he thought Mex- 
ico capable of producing. 

With the history of his country writ 
deep in his heart and an understanding 
of his people consistent and profound, 
he knew that if Mexico was to be de- 
veloped, the skill, the energy, the money 
for the unfolding of her natural re- 
sources and the founding and the shap- 

76 



The Man and the Job *T7 

ing of her industrial potentialities must 
come from outside ; and his thought 
turned naturally to a close commercial 
and financial relationship with his en- 
terprising and powerful rich neighbour 
to the north. But before he could 
hope to enlist foreign genius and at- 
tract foreign capital he realised that 
he must establish order in his disorderly 
country and respect for property 
rights among his lawless people. 

And well Diaz knew the full measure 
of the tremendous undertaking which 
confronted him. Born 1830 under the 
treachery which ruined the patriotic 
efforts of Guerrero and brought death 
to that " Great Commoner of Mexico," 
his youth passed amidst the vivid scenes 
of that distracting period when until 
the coming of Alvarez, cuartelazo fol- 
lowed fast upon cuartelazo, he came to 
his task imbued with the spirit to make 
his country live, and aware of the in- 
stability of his people and their unpre- 
paredness for self-government. 

To fit them to their constitution, to 
lift them to a comprehension of demo- 
cratic principles, Diaz believed could be 
accomplished only through a breath- 
ing spell during which they might be 



78 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

educated and till their land; by the 
subordination of the local political 
leaders to the national government ; and 
by the suppression of robbery and mur- 
der. " Peace was necessary, even an 
enforced peace, that the nation might 
have the time to think and work." 
And it was the work of a giant ; a giant 
of resolute purpose and a firm hand. 
He realised that if he was to make 
a nation of his people Mexico must 
learn to work and to pay her debts. 
So he began by penalising robbery with 
death, he kept his telegraph lines open 
by executing every foreman who failed 
to apprehend those that cut the lines 
in his district, and he suppressed insur- 
rection swiftly and mercilessly. " The 
blood that was shed was bad blood ; the 
blood saved was good blood," as he 
once expressed it in a frank review of 
the early days of his rule. Under this 
Draconian code, applied promptly and 
widely, grew order where had been 
chaos, peace where had been unceasing 
strife, safety where insecurity had 
reigned; and Mexico entered upon her 
first era of real tranquillity. He 
cleared the border of its bandits, and 
kept it cleared, for his experience with 



The Man and the Joh 79 

his neighbour had taught him the 
United States Administration of that 
day would not stand idly recording the 
outrage of its citizens, and the desire 
for its help and the respect for its just 
might which had urged him to put his 
country in order impelled him to keep 
it so. 

And then the Americans came; to 
develop Mexico's resources, to give the 
natives new lessons in wage scale, 
strange experiences in the human rela- 
tions of co-workers, and Mexico her 
first taste of prosperity. 

With Diaz began serious economic 
development ; the regulation of the 
taxes, the placing of the Government 
on a gold basis, the establishment of a 
banking system — separating the banks 
of issue from the banks of loan and 
promotion — and an interest rate of 
six instead of twelve per cent. To his 
own and to the foreigners that came in 
response to his invitation to build, to 
invest and to v/ork, he showed a liberal 
spirit, but in general to no greater ex- 
tent than has been the custom In every 
new country seeking aid in Its upbuild- 
ing, and not nearly so much as we have 
seen over our own country in railroad. 



80 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

irrigation, and manufacturing projects 
of state and private enterprise. 

Everywhere public improvement went 
forward ; streets were paved, hospitals 
and roads were built, schools estab- 
lished, parks laid out. And hand in 
hand with this splurge of contract let- 
ting and new building, went the favour- 
itism, the graft which we see every day 
in our own cities. It was not in the 
work done by foreigners for the na- 
tional Government where money was 
wasted through corruption, but in the 
deals between the Cientifico group and 
the States. 

It has been said truly that of the 
millions of pesos which went into archi- 
tectural monument, into sanitation, 
into general municipal embellishment, 
some might profitably have been di- 
rected towards fitting his people more 
rapidly for democratic government. 
Also it is fair to record that these pesos 
were not squeezed from the pockets of 
the people ; they were the first fruits of 
the industrial boom Diaz had started, 
and the improvements were essential to 
his plan of placing Mexico among the 
enlightened. 

As there had always been so during 



The Man and the Job 81 

the rule of Diaz there was a prepon- 
derance of the well-to-do in the Gov- 
ernment, because the wealthy class 
contained the great majority of the 
educated and because the first consti- 
tution of Mexico proclaimed by More- 
los in 1813, abolished personal taxa- 
tion and placed the burden of govern- 
ment support on this class alone. 

Under this provision or tradition 
grew up the Cientificos, a group at first 
entirely advantageous to the develop- 
ment of Mexico but which became 
finally settled in special privilege and 
for the last six or more years of the 
Diaz regime, dominated official circles 
and distributed government patronage 
almost at will. At the last it became 
more powerful than Diaz himself, this 
political ring, no better and no worse 
than the rings we know in Philadelphia 
and New York, which in his declining 
years enmeshed this shell of the giant 
and, to the casual on-looker, clouded 
the great work he had given his 
country. 

Whether through mis judgment or 
for lack of vision, Diaz in our eyes, 
perhaps after all less discerning in the 
matter than his, failed in two vital re- 



8^ Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

spects ; first, in not putting his people 
on the land in small holdings ; and sec- 
ond, in not encouraging to wider ad- 
vance in democratic and political train- 
ing his growing middle class — that 
class upon which rests the bulwark of 
every republic. That he did not ex- 
tend suffrage throughout the land was 
because he believed the people en masse 
were not qualified for the vote; that 
the elections were in most instances pre- 
arranged was part and parcel of mis- 
take number two. Yet he told James 
Creelman in 1908, and I believe truly, 
that he had " waited patiently for the 
day when the people of Mexico were 
prepared to choose and change their 
government at every election without 
danger of armed revolution and with- 
out injury to the national credit or in- 
terference with national progress." 
Two years later his people had returned 
to their abandoned habits of looting 
and killing 1 

Yet whatever mistakes Diaz may 
have made, what he accomplished was so 
big under odds so heavy as to out- 
weigh the errors and render them neg- 
ligible in the world's record of achieve- 
ment. He put Mexico on the civilised 



The Man and the Job 83 

map, covered her land with telegraph 
wires and rails, placed robbery almost 
among the lost native arts, made travel 
both comfortable and safe, built up 
Mexico's foreign trade from thirty mil- 
lion of pesos to over five hundred mil- 
lion, and local industry from hand 
looms to mills and foundries and fac- 
tories. He found three thousand 
schools in the whole land, he built ten 
thousand others ; he succeeded to an 
empty treasury, he left one containing 
sixty-three million pesos, when he re- 
signed and quitted the country on May 
25, 1911. 

Criticism to the contrary notwith- 
standing, Porfirio Diaz was a patriotic 
and a gallant figure in Mexican history. 
He sought to make a nation of his 
unstable, untrained people, and dis- 
rupted land. Despite the handicap of 
the Cientificos and of his own indiffer- 
ence to the bad land laws, he carried 
Mexico to where it was just about to 
take its place among the advanced and 
enlightened nations of the world as he 
was ambitious for it to be. And then 
Madero came ; a symbol swept along on 
an emotional wave loosed by his " free 
land " slogan and the maddening sight 



84 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

of the opulent, obscuring politicians 
ringed around the President, too en- 
grossed to descry the pit they were 
digging for themselves, too selfish for 
thought of the harm they did their 
chief or the injury they gave their fel- 
low citizens. 

It wasn't his strength that won Ma- 
dero the revolution; it was that the 
government disclosed its weakness. 
When in an eleventh hour aAvakening 
Diaz, manipulated by Limantour, and 
beginning his eighth term of office, de- 
clared in answer to the free land de- 
mand of the Madero revolt, for no 
re-election, "effective suffrage," and 
the opening of public land for small 
buyers, the people beheld a government 
that had ruled with arbitrary sway now 
suddenly resorting to conciliatory com- 
promise; and they were swift to with- 
draw both their fear and their respect. 
By its failure to pull down the rag-tag 
and bob-tail following of Madero, the 
erstwhile " iron hand " revealed its im- 
potence, and the Dictator before whom * 
all had bowed but a few days before, 
now heard the howl in the streets 
for his resignation by the emboldened 
people. The fight had gone out of the 



The Man and the Job 85 

Diaz government ; the army proved 
straw, the cabinet inept, and the ring, 
conscious of its guilt and that its day 
of reckoning had come, confused and 
hysterical. 

The people, faithful sons of atavism, 
were playing true to form as in all their 
previous history they had played when 
the wholesome fear of might was re- 
moved ; and with fear removed and long 
curbed ambitions released, hell broke 
loose. 

By certain sympathisers of the fallen 
government Madero was said to have 
won because of the moral support of 
the American Government and the 
money aid of large American interests 
— " big Business." This was repeated 
over and again to stir Mexicans to anti- 
American feeling, and was accepted by 
them as it was also by the great ma- 
jority of newspapers and magazines 
and others who based their superficial 
knowledge on port rumours and cafe 
gossip. 

The revolt with which Madero's 
name is associated really was begun in 
Chihuahua by Orozco as a protest 
against a local jefe, and when Madero 
returned from Texas where he had fled 



86 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

on his release from jail, the two joined 
in the common cause of revolt against 
Diaz. The money for their support 
came neither from an oil company nor 
any other foreign interest. It was a 
short campaign and an inexpensive one, 
and what Madero raised on his prop- 
erty, Orozco secured through forced 
loans, and the 700,000 pesos appropri- 
ated by Gustavo Madero from the 
funds of a railroad organised in Mex- 
ico and financed in Paris, comprised 
practically the entire amount. Were 
the claim of such foreign help a fact, 
the failure of the Madero government 
to protect these interests would show 
strange ingratitude. In truth one of 
the early things he did after inaugura- 
tion was to create an export tax on oil. 

Madero had an idea, the idea shared 
by every reputable citizen, that the 
lowly of his people ought to have 
greater opportunity, and that a coun- 
try with eighty per cent, of its popula- 
tion uneducated was out of harmony 
with twentieth century civilisation. It 
was a good if not a novel idea, but 
needed experience, knowledge, force, to 
produce practical results. 

He had the ideal, had honesty, had 



The Man and the Job 87 

the wish, but he entered upon* his most 
difficult office utterly unfitted by train- 
ing or temperament, and surrounded 
himself with advisers who were little 
abler than he to meet the big questions 
confronting him, and not always co- 
operative. Unwise in his appoint- 
ments, unversed in the political vagaries 
of his confreres, harassed by criticism 
and intrigue, he was a fated and a 
despairing figure. He was unable to 
exact compliance from his official fam- 
ily with the benevolent plan he had is- 
sued from San Luis Potosi; he failed 
to cure the ills he had railed against; 
the elections in the States remained 
about as usual, and " free land " de- 
veloped little further than to remain 
the party banner. Failure was fore- 
ordained; the job was too big for him. 

Diaz and Madero had one experience 
in common — the experience which Hi- 
dalgo and Morelos and Guerrero and 
Gomez Farias and Comonfort and Te- 
jada, and other less conspicuous figures 
in Mexican history also shared before 
them — viz. their followers in the day 
of prosperity abandoned them in the 
hour of adversity. 

When the Madero " idea " flamed 



88 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

into a conflagration which threatened 
the Diaz regime, the men whom it had 
brought to power, who had advantaged 
themselves richl};^ when the palsied 
" iron hand " had lost its weight and 
grip, the men who owed their very po- 
litical existence to the Dictator — scut- 
tled like rats to escape, without a 
thought of their president or their 
country. When overwhelmed by State 
problems beyond his ken, surrounded 
by detractors, facing conspirators, 
Madero turned for counsel and support 
to the men with whom he had fought, 
to the friends that had applauded and 
cajoled him — they turned theii? backs. 
The man who in 1910 had been hailed 
as the " redeemer " of his people, who 
had been elected in 1911 under the con- 
stitution of the country by the " largest 
(19,500) popular vote ever cast for a 
president in the history of Mexico," 
could not in February, 1913, muster 
sufficient support from among all these 
to hold the leadership of his army 
against so contemptible a coxcomb as 
Felix Diaz, or save the State or his life 
from so ill-equipped and vicious a com- 
pany as the senors Huerta-Mondragon- 
Iwodolfo Reyes, in those foul and tragic 



The Man and the Job 89 

days of betrayal, and citizen butchery 
in February, 1913. The people that 
had wildly acclaimed Madero on his en- 
trance into Mexico City, had hailed him 
as " the people's friend," as the deliv- 
erer from the " iron hand," and de- 
clared him to have " freed all Mexico 
from espionage and placed the Mexi- 
cans on their honour," marched cheer- 
ing through the streets of the same city 
when the announcement came that Ma- 
dero had been arrested by Huerta ! 
The press which Madero had freed, 
criticised and caricatured him with 
neither fairness nor judgment. His- 
tory had repeated itself. 



When the Americans Went to 
Mexico 

THE suppression of lawlessness in 
Mexico was the signal for a for- 
eign industrial invasion. Every now 
and again a story of its mines and 
ranches and farms had floated out be- 
tween revolutions to friends at home 
from some American who had ventured 
into the country after our Civil War, 
but continuous internal strife kept it an 
unknown land to capital and labour. 

First among those to respond to the 
Diaz call, in 1879, for help to build up 
his country, were the railroad men. 
England had been the pioneer with the 
Veracruz-Mexico City line, begun in 
1854, but not been opened until twenty 
years later owing to continual disturb- 
ance, and in 1878 this and another 
short line to Queretaro, represented all 
there were of railroads in Mexico's 
eight hundred thousand square miles. 

Quickly followed the miners, the 

ranchers, the planters, and last, the ex- 

90 



When Americans Went to Mexico 91 

plorers for oil, and along with these 
went the traders and the bankers and 
a host of managers, foremen, and clerks. 
It is also true that here, as is the case 
in the opening of every new field, espe- 
cially railroad and mining field, there 
followed in the wake of legitimate busi- 
ness enterprise and venture, a class of 
promoters, of commercial renegades, 
hailing chiefly from America, that were 
no credit to either their country or the 
business world and who engaged in 
many varieties of questionable under- 
takings and were responsible for some 
rather shady stories which came out of 
the new country. It was a small class, 
but an annoying and a discreditable 
one, and almost the last of them were 
cleaned out by consular action under 
President Roosevelt. 

In every industry these railroaders 
and miners and others of the same fine 
pioneer type that had developed their 
own great West, found crude methods 
of work ; and everywhere the native la- 
bourer living wretchedly, illy paid and 
roughly, often brutally treated. 

They replaced the human ore bucket 
with modern American machinery, the 
forked stick with the iron ploughshare 



92 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

and undertook the industrial education 
of that vast peon class for whose ad- 
vancement or material care no native 
employer appeared to have given 
thought. 

Before the foreigners came these 
workers received from the equivalent of 
twenty-five cents down to a mere allow- 
ance of corn for a day's work, whether 
in the mines or in the field, and had no 
fixed hours of labour ; they were being 
paid before this present revolution, 
from at least four to eight and more 
times that much. Now, in 1916, on the 
railroads taken over by the Carranza 
government, labourers have been put 
back to where they were thirty years 
ago and are receiving four cents (gold) 
for their day's work. 

The men employed by the light and 
power companies who now get one peso, 
or rather got it in 1912, in the old days 
received eighteen centavos ; the house 
servants that worked for from two to 
eight pesos a month now receive from 
twenty-five to forty-five from the for- 
eigner. 

Everywhere the foreigner has raised 
the wages and regulated the working 
hours. And the Spanish and Mexican 



When Americans Went to Mexico 93 

ranch and farm and mine owners have 
been compelled also to raise wages 
to some extent, and do not like the 
change. 

A Mexican ranchero was paying his 
men fifty centavos a day when an oil 
company next door, so to say, opened 
for business and paid its men one peso 
fifty. The ranchero, Lopez by name, 
endeavoured to get the men back, not 
by raising their pay but by telling them 
they were foreigners' slaves, that the 
foreigners were going to take their 
country away from them, and more of 
the inflammatory talk common to this 
type of half breed. Soon after this 
Lopez joined the constitutionalist 
cause to " uplift the eighty per cent." 
But his conduct towards his men on 
that ranch showed his real concern for 
their well being. 

Another equally characteristic but 
more pleasing instance is that of the 
manager of a Monterrey brewery who, 
just at starting, had a strike among 
his men for thirty instead of the twen- 
ty-five cents a day they had been given 
by the former owner. In peace time 
these men receive $1.50 and have since 
the American took hold. And that is 



94 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

the story throughout Mexico where the 
foreigner has gone into business. 

I recall two ladies met in the Gov- 
ernor's anteroom in Morelia who com- 
plained that " the English ladies whose 
husbands had come to make the sewers, 
had paid servants so much that she 
must now pay as much as twenty- 
four reales ($2.40) a month for a 
cook." 

The foreigner, having increased the 
worker's wage so that better living be- 
came a possibility, went on to teach 
him how, and surrounded his attempts 
with kindly thought and guidance. 

There is not another field of labour in 
the world where the lowly have had the 
considerate and intelligent treatment as 
is given in Mexico to this great help- 
less labouring class by the English and 
Americans. Schools for their children, 
hospitals for their sick, baths, recrea- 
tion centres for their entertainment, 
sanitary homes for their families ; 
water and gardens furnished, their 
wages safeguarded against unscrupu- 
lous agents, and the destroying pulque 
habit combated. Such a paternalism is 
scarcely to be believed unless witnessed 
on the ground. Particularly the em- 



When Americans Went to Mexico 95 

ployers tried to get the men to save 
their money, to make use of higher 
wages in better Hving, better food, shel- 
ter, and clothing for the family. The 
effort has never been easy and not al- 
ways successful, for the average Mex- 
ican of this class is prone to spend the 
increase of money in extended idleness 
rather than to better his living condi- 
tions, and a process of education long 
and arduous has been a necessary pre- 
lude. 

At the Santa Rosa mine near Sal- 
tillo the company built small houses for 
their men with a tillable quarter acre 
patch of land around each for which 
they pay the nominal sum of one peso 
a month. 

At Ebano, at a cost of $10,000, the 
Huasteca Company erected a large and 
handsome recreation building contain- 
ing a hall with stage and piano where 
entertainment is regularly provided, a 
well filled and chosen library for the 
more advanced, indoor games of many 
kinds and teachers for those that wish 
to improve themselves. 

The Real del Monte Company, in or- 
der to save its men from the avaricious 
local store-keepers who were making the 



96 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

most of the recent food shortage, 
bought corn by the carload and sold it 
to the workmen at cost. 

At Tampico the Mexican Petroleum 
Company during the famine period of 
last winter, brought in beans by the 
carload at a considerable expense and 
distributed them among its people. 

Pachuca is in the pulque district and 
the miners are more or less accustomed 
to get drunk every Saturday night and 
spend all their money, except a small 
portion given the wife for the week's 
marketing on Sunday morning. This 
amount which the wife providentially 
exacts with much difficulty, is seldom if 
ever enough, so that when the supplies 
are exhausted it is the habit of the men 
to borrow against their Saturday pay 
check from the store and cantinas at a 
ten per cent, interest fee for the ad- 
vance. 

In an effort to save him this need to 
borrow and the consequent interest 
charge as well as to help his family to 
better, easier living, the Santa Ger- 
trudis Company inaugurated a daily 
pay day at considerably increased 
bookkeeping, so that every one who de- 
sired might get one peso of his wage 



When Americans Went to Mexico 97 

every day, the balance being held to the 
usual week end pay day. 

The manager of the El Oro Company 
found that the " collectors " — the sort 
of head men that bring in applicants for 
work — were knocking down about one- 
third on each man they furnished, it 
being the long established custom to pay 
over to the collector the Avages of the 
men he brought in. This the company 
stopped by paying direct to the work- 
men, who strangely enough — for such 
the contrary working of the Mexican 
mind — rebelled at first, but soon came 
to see its purpose and value when they 
got the entire amount of their wage. 
Any innovation with the Mexican is apt 
to draw his disapproval ; and if the 
leaders are loud enough in their objec- 
tions even a riot may occur over the in- 
auguration of something as much for 
their own benefit as in this case. 

I know another company in the Du- 
rango district which, although shut 
down and losing money every day, 
keeps a physician on their property to 
watch over the health of the families 
of their former workmen who were 
forced to join the army by pressure of 
the local jefe and hunger, fighting be- 



98 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

ing the only job left in most of Mexico. 

These are but incidents taken here 
and there of the help given their work- 
men by the " foul foreign hand." All. 
Mexico furnishes similar ones. 

Formerly under Spanish and Mex- 
ican employers the workmen were 
obliged to patronise the company ti- 
enda de raya or store, where the sup- 
plies were doled to them at exorbitant 
prices as part payment, and frequently 
no cash was given at all or seldom. 
Now the company store has been abol- 
ished on all English and American 
properties, or if, in remote sections it 
exists as a convenience to the men, it has 
no connection with the paymaster de- 
partment and the men buy or not as 
they please the same as at any other 
shop — except that here they get more 
for their money. 

Particular attention has always been 
given also by the foreigners to the con- 
duct of their foremen towards the Mex- 
icans and Indians, especially the illit- 
erate ones — to see that they are not 
roughly handled and no advantage 
taken of their ignorance. They are 
naturally suspicious and their treat- 
ment by their own people was, and still 



When Americans Went to Mexico 99 

is, generally very severe. Pains are al- 
ways taken in arranging their wages 
and their contract work to see that the 
men are satisfied and are given a good 
return for their labour. If there are 
any complaints they are patiently and 
willingly listened to and their accounts 
carefully gone over and explained. 

When the American first went to 
Mexico shoes were unknown among any 
but the better classes. To-day in 
backward towns, like Leon for exam- 
ple, you hardly will find shoe shops, 
Americans not having operated in or 
around Leon and the wages being still 
low and the standard of living very 
much as it always has been. But 
where the Americans and English are 
engaged in development work you see 
shoes, felt hats, overalls, and especially 
children's clothing on sale in the native 
stores. You never see children in what 
could be called clothes in sections where 
the foreigners have not been. You 
never saw children in clothes at all sltij- 
where before the foreigners came. You 
do see them clothed now for the for- 
eigner has paid the peon enough to feed 
his family and dress them; and given 
him the desire to do so. Before the 



100 What's the Matter with Mexico? 

foreigners came even the men hardly 
were clothed for their pay would not 
permit of it. I recall an oil painting 
hanging in a club of Mexico City that 
represents a scene in the Zocolo (plaza) 
of the city of about 1830, in which 
squatting peons and the aguadores are 
shown with only a breech-clout. 

When the Americans went to Mexico 
there were practically but two classes 
of people, the ruling class and the work- 
ing or peon class. The peon was the 
all-round labourer. In the saddle and 
on the cattle ranch he was excellent, but 
beyond this his knowledge extended 
only to a crude kind of mining and 
farming. When the mines and the 
railroads and the other industries of 
the foreigners began operation there 
was, therefore, no local supply of help- 
ers apart from this ordinary worker; 
there was no skilled labour. Now there 
are not half as many Americans em- 
ployed in foreign enterprises as even 
so recently as ten years ago. As fore- 
men, shift bosses, underground or on 
the surfaces, as carpenters, mechanics, 
engineers afloat or ashore, clerks, they 
are filling the posts and filling them well. 
The master mechanics of many mines 



When Americans Went to Mexico 101 

are Mexicans, and all the companies on 
the rivers prefer the native crews, from 
engineer to oiler, for their launches. 
The Mexican makes a most efficient 
mechanic and carpenter, and is espe- 
cially clever at cabinet work. They 
are indeed naturally dexterous and 
competent at anything with their hands, 
as witnessed by their carving. The 
shoe factories in Mexico now rely en- 
tirely on native men and women. 

The manager of a popular and cheap 
watch company told me that when they 
first started a branch factory in Mex- 
ico they found to their astonishment 
that the initial timing of watches on 
the assembling of its parts was nearly 
fifty per cent, better by both men and 
women than had been their experience 
in either the United States or England, 
indicating the greater care of the Mex- 
ican and especially the delicacy of the 
work he is capable of with his hands. 

To build, to educate this class of na- 
tive helpers required patient and expen- 
sive training, for considering its aver- 
age of return, Mexican labour is not 
cheap ; operations can be carried on 
more cheaply in America. But to de- 
velop helpers out of the natives of the 



102 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

country as well as to develop its re- 
sources was the plan of the American 
pioneer. Not that his impulse was 
charitable, but because the American 
believes in a square deal and his busi- 
ness habit and methods make for ef- 
ficiency. 

There is no doubt of the uplift given 
to the inert labouring class by Amer- 
ican and other foreigners — always ex- 
cepting the Spaniards, whom, in fact, 
I never refer to as " foreigners." 
From an illiterate, abject race of near- 
slaves, American enterprise and fair 
treatment have made them a people 
with a considerable number that can op- 
erate machinery, self-respecting, effi- 
cient ; and — until revolution and the 
I. W. W. fell upon them — happy. 

The record of the American in Mex- 
ico is one for his country to be proud 
of. He has given the peon a chance ; 
he has helped to build a middle class. 
Above all he has created him indus- 
trially ; for apart from increasing the 
wages of the lowest grade workman, he 
has produced higher grades of work, 
which before his coming were unknown 
in Mexico, and fitted the native to it. 

This is what Bryan calls " exploit- 



When Americans Went to Mexico 103 

ing " the native. But the native knows 
better. And the proof that he knows 
the American in Mexico better than 
Bryan or official Washington, is, that 
3'ou never find him working for his own 
people if he can get work from the 
American. 

Popular thought in America, based 
on the fanciful sketches of Mexico 
which have ruled in magazine and press, 
pictures an El Dorado with Americans 
roosting on the border like vultures 
ready to swoop upon every industrial 
tidbit uncovered. But Mexico was no 
virgin El Dorado ; and Americans paid 
full market value for what they got. 

Take mines for instance. The pop- 
ular conception is a treasury which the 
Americans and English had but to en- 
ter — and pick up gold. The fact does 
bear out the fiction. Mexico is not 
the fabulous repository it is commonly 
thought to be except in the matter of 
quantity. For three hundred years 
the Spaniards and the Mexicans took 
the cream, which was very rich, and 
they were glad, not to say relieved, to 
sell to the Americans whom they urged 
to come in and work. Americans 
brought financial and scientific assist- 



104 What's the Matter with Mexico? 

ance to help operations which were 
nearing a termination because the na- 
tive holders had reached the limit of 
their knowledge ; and their advent was 
a life saver to camps that had long lain 
idle because the owners could not carry 
them farther by their primitive meth- 
ods on the low-grade ores remaining. 
In a word, the Spaniards and Mexicans 
had worked out the mines they sought 
to dispose of. 

The money and experience and 
knowledge and better ore treatment the 
Americans brought caused a revival of 
operations, and a new lease of mining 
life in Mexico. Large capital and 
great skill were necessary in such ven- 
tures because the property could not 
possibly be operated profitably on a 
small scale, and the resources finally de- 
veloped by such means would have been 
untouched if left in Mexican hands. 

Investments in Mexican mines have 
not been so remunerative on the whole 
as investments in mines in the United 
States for the reason that mines in 
Mexico, nine times out of ten, are old 
mines, whereas in the United States 
they are new. New discoveries or new 
districts in Mexico are rare. In 



When Americans Went to Mexico 105 

twenty years I know of only a few. 

There are the old mines in Sinaloa 
from which, in times past, the Mexi- 
can owners have taken a large amount 
of money, and which they now seek to 
sell at very high prices. To work 
these mines would require a very great 
capital for the purpose of sinking new 
shafts, providing better haulage and 
ventilation in order to go deeper and 
so make them pay through the quantity 
Oi' ore removed. Guanajuato is an ex- 
ample of old mines practically dead 
which were bought by Americans and 
have been worked almost continuously 
for ten years and have paid little profit. 

The coal mines in Coahuila, a really 
important and necessary industry for 
Mexico, have been in operation for the 
last fifteen years on an inferior coal 
which had to compete with a much bet- 
ter grade from the United States ; a 
very large amount of money has been 
spent in bettering their washing plants 
and really very little profit on their out- 
lay of capital has been made. 

In a good many cases the old mines 
purchased have done well, mainly be- 
cause foreigners have brought better 
methods of operation and capital to 



106 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

equip for deep work and for the treat- 
ment of the difficult ore vvhich the Span- 
iards and the Mexicans could not 
handle. In as many cases or more, in- 
vestments in Mexico have not been good 
and have been attended with a great 
deal of delay before anything like profit- 
able work resulted. If Americans had 
not gone into Mexico, that country 
would now be in much the same condi- 
tion as Guatemala and all the Central 
American republics. 

Mexico needs to foster its mining in- 
dustry very carefully. The business 
has reached its zenith and unless new 
discoveries are made and opened up, 
Mexico's glory as a great mining land 
will wane. And new discoveries are 
not too likely ; the Spaniards were good 
prospectors and explored the country 
from end to end for mineral. 

Some say the foreigners have " ex- 
ploited " Mexico. Well, the mineral, 
the guayule, the oil, were always there 
— and had the foreigners not come, 
would have continued untouched for 
probably another four hundred years. 

It would seem as if " developed " 
would be a more appropriate word to 
employ. 



When Americans Went to Mexico 107 

The oil, for example, had always ex- 
isted; for ages it had been known; the 
Aztecs employed it for the floors of 
their temples, but the Spaniard found 
no use for it. And undeveloped that 
marvellous reservoir of petroleum re- 
mained — while Mexico was buying pe- 
troleum outside of its border — until 
the genius of Charles A. Canfield and 
Edward L. Doheny unlocked it to the 
world in the year 1900. But it took 
courage and experience and more than 
three million of dollars before success 
came to reward the judgment and per- 
severance of these pioneers. 

So the building and the prosperity of 
Mexico went on. The help which Diaz 
had asked for had been given freely, and 
in 1910 the foreign trade of Mexico in 
consequence was over five hundred mil- 
lion pesos — starting from less than 
one-tenth of that figure — twenty 
thousand miles of railroads had taken 
the place of the two short lines ; one 
billion of American and another half 
billion of English money had been in- 
vested in the country ; and the foreign- 
ers that had helped in the building 
were, for the greater number, still in 
residence the happy and prospering em- 



108 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

ployers of over two million improved 
and contented natives. 

Most of the manufacturing industry, 
much of the planting, all of the electric 
power and lighting and street paving, 
all of the railroads, and all of modern 
mining were developed by foreigners 
and financed for the most part by for- 
eigners. All the notable buildings in 
the country not left by the Spaniards, 
were designed and built by foreigners ; 
and foreigners pay eighty per cent, of 
the internal taxes of Mexico. 

In a word, Mexico's natural but dor- 
mant resources have been quickened 
into life and dollars by foreign enter- 
prise and capital which have brought 
great riches to the country and great 
betterment to its people. In this in- 
dustrial and human development the 
American has taken a leading and an 
honourable part. Let us glance at 
some of the types of him that thus 
" served humanity " practically and 
their own country as advance trade 
agents in Mexico. 

Allen was a chemist in New York, 
where returning soldiers from the Mex- 
ican War had told him of the archaic 
drug shops in Mexico City, and thus 



When Americans Went to Mexico 109 

opened his eyes to a new and likely busi- 
ness field. He made the journey by 
sailing boat and stage, and opened the 
first adequate drug compounding house 
in Mexico City before our Civil War. 
His children were born in Mexico and 
all he held dear were there. His busi- 
ness success brought orders to Amer- 
ican wholesalers who passed the pro- 
ceeds on to the American producers of 
drugs and appliances and medicines. 
He extended American trade. His 
work was and is of benefit to Mex- 
ico. 

Bates was a wet plate photographer. 
His war time wagon took him to Mex- 
ico long before the railways. Pho- 
tography was for the rich at that time ; 
he made it a possibility for the poor. 
His simple portraits perpetuate the 
memory of thousands of heads of Mex- 
ican families. He prospered and 
showed the way to better materials and 
paraphernalia — from the United 
States. He extended our trade in 
Latin America, and the supply house 
he established still takes American 
goods in great quantities to our Latin- 
American friends. He and his kind by 
their presence and industry turn orders 



110 WJiafs the Mattel' uith Mexico? 

away from Germany to the United 
States. 

Childs came with the railroad. He 
was chainman in a gang of the first sur- 
veyors. He learned to know and to 
like the peon, as no Mexican can like 
his inferior. He rose to high grade on 
the railways. He and hundreds of his 
kind kept the Mexican railways Amer- 
icanised, and also Americanised the 
English built roads. Every year they 
turned millions of dollars of orders into 
American shops and foundries and 
rolling mills, which passed the millions 
on to carpenters, upholsterers, lumber 
jacks, mechanics, puddlers, and miners 
— all American. He and his kind serve 
their country and extend their trade. 
They have got " better acquainted," as 
President Wilson has advised. They 
have educated the Mexican along the 
railway lines to do the work of Ameri- 
cans. When they first came, in the 
1880's, contractors were forced to 
bring with them tim.ekeepers and all 
clerks needed, for there were no read- 
ing or writing Mexicans for the work 
at that time. When these American 
railroad builders came the last time 
they found all their required clerical 



When Americans Went to Mexico 111 

force on the ground, native. They 
have served to educate, more, they have 
trained the Mexican and so helped him 
as well as the trade of their own coun- 
try. 

Dean was a Colorado prospector. 
There are thousands of Deans. He 
heard in the late '80's that Mexican 
mining: laws had at last been revised to 
protect owners against confiscation 
through chaotic and capricious taxa- 
tion. He went mine hunting and found 
that only the bonanzas were being 
worked by the native owners. He took 
a low grade Spanish rabbit-holed hill- 
side and brought American machinery 
down the railroad, over the trails, and, 
by block and tackle, up and over the 
hills and through the canyons. And 
he made the abandoned mine pay. 

Other Deans came, bringing Amer- 
ican machinery and cables and tools. 
All mines in the country saw the ad- 
vantage of their appliances, and to-day 
no other brand is being used over all 
of Mexico. Dean and his kind did it. 
Most of them lost their money, but the 
trade they built up has enriched the 
American producer, and his workers, 
do^vn to the man who mined the iron 



112 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

ore. And they paid the Mexican miner 
four times more than his former Mex- 
ican employer paid him, and treated 
him a hundred fold better. Now-a- 
days the Mexican miner will work only 
for an American or English employer 
if there is one in his district. 

Eads was a lawyer. On a suit for a 
client who sold office supplies, he went 
to Mexico City. His suit dragged piti- 
fully and he loafed around the Mexican 
branch of his client. He became at- 
tracted to the trade and dropped into 
a chair permanently. He has sold fur- 
niture, all American now, for twenty 
years. His American made goods 
have, by his presence and his personal- 
ity, been so strongly pushed, that his 
orders to American factories have ex- 
ceeded ten million dollars. The fac- 
tory has paid this out to its workers 
for assembling and making ; and to lum- 
bermen for the wood, who have passed 
it on to their axmen and teamsters ; to 
cloth mills, who have passed it on to 
their spinners ; and, through wholesal- 
ers, ginmen, and planters, to the Amer- 
icans who picked the cotton and sheared 
the sheep. 

Eads has paid the price of success as 



When Americans Went to Mexico 113 

a salesman ; he has been accused of hav- 
ing a " stand-in " ; but it is as certain 
as the rain in August (Mexico) that 
if he had not been on the ground to pick 
up those ten millions of dollars orders, 
the orders would have gone to German 
or French or English factories, and 
enriched European instead of American 
workmen. 

Fenn was a mechanic. The railways 
brought him down. He set up a shop 
for working iron and equipped it with 
American machines. No other iron 
working machinery is now used in Mex- 
ico ; the American salesmen on the 
ground see to that. Take them, and 
Fenn, and his kind away and the ma- 
chinery will come from elsewhere, and 
this contribution to American export 
and American workmen, and, through 
the company, the shop, and the mine, 
will go across the water. And Fenn 
took the raw Indian, who has a strange 
machine sense, and made him an iron- 
master. As a result the Indian is fond 
of Fenn and is educating his children 
on the wages the Fenns pay him. 

Green was a stockman in Texas. He 
knew that in the livestock country of 
Mexico milch cows are scarce, and 



114 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

brought a carload to Queretero where 
he started a dairy. Cows are not bred 
in Mexico, and he began the business, 
since then extended, of the importation 
of cows. He and other Americans have 
furnished milk to the people free from 
water, and clean. Their imports of 
milch cows has sent hundreds of thou- 
sands of dollars to farmers and ranch- 
ers in the West and Middlewest. 

Howe was a farmer. He took up a 
small ranch near the Gulf Coast. His 
Mexican neighbours hired their help ; 
he did his own work with American ma- 
chinery. His neighbours saw the advan- 
tage of the deep plough over the fork 
of a tree, and began to buy American 
agricultural machinery. The example 
was given by Howe ; the American man- 
ufacturer and workman profit. And 
the Mexican farmer has the American 
machinery habit, which he will hold as 
long as the example lasts, 

Ives drifted to Mexico as a plumber. 
He is now known as the best in the busi- 
ness. He boosts American plumbing 
supplies against the English, French, 
and German, and keeps them from a 
clear field and the money spent for these 
necessary house furnishings by having 



When Americans Went to Meocico 115 

live salesmen and enthusiastic boosters 
on the ground. 

Jones was a contractor who would 
try anything in the construction line. 
He could underbid his Mexican, Span- 
ish, and English rivals because the peon 
labourers followed him ; and the labour- 
ers followed him because he treated 
them right and worked them laughing. 
He bought American shovels and picks 
and showed his rivals the way to tool 
economy. But for him they would 
have continued to buy their tools in 
England. He knew something better 
than the two-wheel whole body dump 
cart ; he brought down American four- 
wheel under-dump wagons, and his com- 
petitors had to do the same, and the re- 
sult was increased trade for the Amer- 
ican manufacturers, better treatment 
for Mexican drivers and labourers gen- 
erally — not to speak of increased 
work for American factories and wheel- 
wrights. 

Keep, knowing that the growing 
American colony would buy American 
groceries, began competition with the 
Spanish tienda men on their own 
ground. His groceries were all Amer- 
ican. They were laid before Mexicans 



116 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

at American houses. And the American 
canner has had an income from Mexico 
to pass on to the tinsmith, the fruit 
grower, the farmer, and the fisherman 
of the United States. When Keep and 
his many American grocer associates 
leave Mexico, the Mexican trade will 
go again to Spain and France. 

Leach was a California oil man who 
heard of asphalt exudes in Mexico. He 
had men, and he had money. He 
bought and leased his land, and then 
began the most heartbreaking business 
of them all, fighting jungle, mud, dis- 
tance, and time. He risked every dol- 
lar he had in the world, but he pro- 
duced the first oil in Mexico and gave 
the world a cheaper fuel and Mexico a 
new source of wealth. He multiplied 
the Mexican workers' wages by four, 
and gave them schools and hospitals 
and homes and comforts. His tools, 
machinery, wagons, mules, traction-en- 
gines, pumps, pipe, rails, locomotives, 
and everything necessary in a business 
that makes necessary the building of 
whole towns and communities at the 
company's expense, came from his own 
country. 

He and other oil men that followed 



When Americans Went to Mexico 117 

him have brought into Mexico thou- 
sands of miles of American pipe, and 
hundreds of acres of tank plates. Had 
they not ventured from home and 
risked their money, this enormous busi- 
ness would have gone to the hard com- 
peting German or the well-established 
and confident Englishman. 

The balance of the alphabet could be 
filled out with others of that company 
of advance agents who, invited by Diaz, 
encouraged by the treaty which assures 
them and their property full guarantees 
of protection, went to Mexico until 
their number swelled to probably fifty 
thousand in 1910. There they risked 
life, money; created industry, raised 
their homes, reared their children, and 
built up America's trade with Mexico 
until her share was sixty per cent, of 
the whole ; which means that American 
exports to Mexico were more than to 
either China or the Philippines. 

These are the men who have been 
doing practical " uplift " work in Mex- 
ico, and these the Americans, their 
women, and their children whom the 
Administration abandoned to a furious 
half-civilised people in a tempest of an- 
archy ! 



What Is a Concession? 

S " free land " is the loudly pro- 
claimed panacea of the Mexican 
orator-revolutionist for all the ills of 
Mexico, so " big business " as the root 
of all evil in Mexico is the apparition of 
President Wilson, and of all the scrib- 
bling theorists and professional paci- 
fists that have cast a casual eye upon 
that unhappy and but little understood 
country. 

Because Lord Cowdry had been un- 
usually favoured in the way of an oil 
exploring license by the Diaz Govern- 
ment with a view to bring English com- 
petitors into the oil field, and the Wa- 
ters Pierce Company and Cowdry later 
engaged in a price cutting war, it must 
necessarily follow, according to Admin- 
istration logic, that one or the other or 
both of them were fomenting revolution 
in their commercial rivalry, and hence 
all other rival investors in Mexico must 
be engaged in undermining the Govern- 
ment in a general struggle for illegal 
advantage. 

lis 



What Is a Concession? 119 

Woodrow Wilson affects to believe 
and seeks to make the people of the 
United States believe through his un- 
just, polished phrases, that the business 
ventures of Americans in Mexico are 
predatory and baneful ; that they are 
based on " concessions " scenting to 
high heaven with fraudulent special 
privilege wrung from the Mexican Gov- 
ernment through corruption at the ex- 
pense of the Mexican people. 

Neither the President nor the editors 
who take their cue from his slanderous 
fluency appear to know what a conces- 
sion is. 

The word " concession " has been 
used as a bait for speculators, and in 
newspaper " write ups," by the smooth 
promoters, of whom Mexico has had 
more than its share, to imply especial, 
personal, and exclusive favour. It is 
not all or any one of these things in 
the sense inferred. It is instead merely 
a national license to do business with- 
out the handicap of local extortion. 

Any and every government contract 
is a concession. A contract to lay 
sewers, to lay a pipe line, to sell mules, 
to build a factory or a hospital or a 
school, to buy timber tracts on the pub- 



120 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

lie domain, to explore a given section 
for mineral or water, to supply beef 
or coal or oil to any public institution, 
— is called a concession in Mexico. In 
a word, wherever you wish to be free 
from petty graft, you seek a conces- 
sion. There once was a form of sur- 
veying concession where a block of land 
was given in return for the surveying 
and plotting of certain great stretches, 
of unmapped and literally untravelled 
government land, — but that man paid 
dearly for his land. George Washing- 
ton acquired much land in Virginia by 
a similar form of concession. 

There are no concessions in Mexico 
granted to Americans that can compare 
in generosity or objectionable features 
with the franchises and grants our own 
country gave the railways from the 
Mississippi to the Pacific. In the sense 
of monopolistic privilege or govern- 
ment subsidy, concessions do not exist 
in Mexico for Americans or American 
companies. 

The most usual form of Federal 
" concession " is the contract for the 
Establishment of New Industries. On 
showing that you are opening a new 
industry you can make a contract with 



What Is a Concession? 121 

the national Government, in which un- 
der bond you bind yourself to the fol- 
lowing, among many burdensome obli- 
gations. 

1. To develop your project. 

2. To invest in its development an 
agreed upon minimum of money. 

3. To render annual reports cover- 
ing the innermost history of the busi- 
ness. 

4. To allow any teacher to bring his 
pupils to such schools as you establish 
on your property for your own em- 
ployes at your own expense. 

5. Not to transfer the concession 
without the consent of the Government. 

In return the Government binds it- 
self:— 

1. To allow you to enter upon the 
development of your project. 

S. To allow you free importation of 
the machinery and supplies not pro- 
duced in Mexico, for the establishment 
of the business but not for replace- 
ments, over a period of ten years. 

3. Not to levy any special taxes on 
your enterprise for a ten year period. 

Anybody may compete with you. 
There is not the slightest vestige of 
monopoly. The concession only guar- 



122 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

antees against robbery by taxation. 
It " guarantees," but it does not in- 
variably protect. I know of several le- 
gitimate foreign enterprises holding 
concessions that were taxed out of bus- 
iness by the connivance of state and 
local officials ; and the list is long of 
those not holding concessions that have 
been obliged to close their doors be- 
cause of the constant plucking to which 
they were submitted. 

Then there is also the local conces- 
sion. For example, the American 
Smelting and Refining Company wants 
to put up a smelting plant at either 
San Luis Potosi or Aguas Calientes. 
In its desire to get the business and the 
increase of population, and the free 
school and hospital that it knows the 
Americans always build and in which 
particular this company is notably gen- 
erous, Aguas offers an exemption from 
local taxes for, say, twenty years. And 
the contract is made and the concession 
granted. 

Similar contracts all over America 
are offered constantly by hustling 
towns seeking to attract industries, 
without those receiving the exemption 



What Is a Concession? 123 

agreements being called " sinister in- 
terests." 

However it is entirely true that all 
of the large plantations, ranches, mines, 
oil companies, every foreign developing 
compan}'^, have given money at differ- 
ent times during the last five years to 
the assorted brands of " patriots " that 
come seeking a " loan " ; given often 
and to all factions just as little as they 
could get off with. And they are still 
giving it, in this present day of con- 
stitutional government, to the various 
representatives of the Carranza co- 
horts who seek them out and demand it. 

This is self protection, not foment- 
ing revolution. There is no choice; 
they must give in order to continue 
business and retain their property. 
And even giving has not always saved 
them; the loss by the foreigners from 
wanton destruction and robbery after 
such " protection " reaches hundreds of 
thousands of dollars. 

It is also true that despite these con- 
tracts, these concessions, all foreign in- 
terests have been compelled to pay offi- 
cial tribute to whatever group held the 
balance of national power in their 



124 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

immediate neighbourhood ; to each when 
there was disputed authority or a shift- 
ing command, or, as at present, to such 
Carranza local jefe as may be on the 
job. Tribute and graft. Americans 
" exploiting Mexicans " ! 

There is no " big business " in Mex- 
ico as big business is understood and 
exists in America, in the sense of allied 
or monopolistic combinations of like in- 
terests. The biggest smelting interest 
comes nearest to that classification, but 
it has vigorous and unoppressed rivals. 
There are no American owned indus- 
trial monopolies in Mexico. The 
Standard Oil Co., to whose fearsome 
activities we see such frequent refer- 
ence by these writing casuists, is really 
a very small influence in the Mexican 
oil producing world. There are indeed 
few monopolies as such of any owner- 
ship in Mexico, — a dynamite factory, 
a brewery in Sonora, some pearl fish- 
eries on the California Gulf Coast, two 
cigarette manufactures, — one or two 
others, the list is shorter than can be 
found in a like area elsewhere and 
not one of them is held by an Ameri- 
can. 

While the ownership and manage- 



What Is a Concession? 125 

ment of the mines and power and light 
and oil enterprises are held to the ma- 
jor extent by Americans and English, 
Mexicans are on the directorate of 
many of these and separately own com- 
panies that are strong and progressive. 
For example, Mexican control and own- 
ership is represented by somewhat less 
than one-third of the ninety operating 
oil companies ; by eighteen out of forty- 
eight listed industrial companies ; by 
four out of sixteen electric light and 
power companies, while they share the 
management with the French and Eng- 
lish of the eight chartered banks of 
Mexico City. 

There has of course been struggle 
for monopoly in Mexico just as there 
is and always has been in the United 
States, and along the same lines ; but in 
no instance has the rivalry resulted 
harmfully to the labouring class, or 
taken anything from the Mexicans that 
belonged to them. On the contrary, 
there is no company in Mexico which 
has made more intelligent effort and 
done more extensive or practical work 
for the betterment of the peon, than the 
American S. & R. Co. which in an effort 
to control the smelting business has 



1^6 Whafs the flatter with Mexico? 

tried for long to buy out its competi- 
tors. 

Not only is the theory of the " in- 
terests " in Mexico being fostered and 
safeguarded by special and monopolis- 
tic privilege, at fault, but the oft re- 
peated statement that the business ven- 
tures of foreigners are founded on con- 
cessions is also untrue. Literally the 
reverse is the fact. The overwhelming 
number of foreign interests in Mexico 
is represented by small independent en- 
terprises — merchants, miners, engi- 
neers, planters, contractors, manufac- 
turers — who have no concession and 
no connection with trusts or combines. 
There are " crooks " and there is dis- 
honest business in Mexico, of course, as 
in every other spot on the globe, — 
Mexico is not Utopia, — but these are 
the exceptions. As a whole a cleaner, 
more creditable body of men never rep- 
resented business America anywhere. 
No slander more venomous or injustice 
more wanton could be uttered than the 
statement that these men, who are in 
fact the best friends in Mexico of the 
" submerged 80 per cent.," have " ex- 
ploited " the native. 



When Carranza Came to Town 

WHEN Carranza entered Mexico 
City in August, 1914, after de- 
clining to receive the provisional pres- 
ident's (Carbajal) emissary. General 
Lauro Villar, (one of Madero's few of- 
ficers to remain loyal), the Constitu- 
tionalists had won their fight. The 
purpose for which they had gone to 
war — defeat of Huerta, rescue of the 
constitution — had been attained. 
Huerta's elimination had been effected 
through the landing of United States 
troops at Veracruz, his officers had 
laid down their arms, none opposed the 
restoration of the constitution ; and the 
people, worn and impoverished with 
revolutionary ravages, were eager to 
acknowledge and support this man who 
proclaimed himself the champion of the 
lowly, and an upholder of constitu- 
tional government. 

In the name of that constitution and 
of legality and for the " uplift of the 

submerged 80 per cent." he assumed 
127 



128 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

control as First Chief of the Constitu- 
tionalists ; following which he promptly 
decreed a " pre-constitutional " period. 
It became a government by manifesto. 
A decree of the First Chief in charge of 
the Executive Power had all the effect 
of law. There was no other law. 
Having set aside that historic and 
dearly prized document for which so 
much blood had been spilled, he allowed 
his officers to take what they pleased. 
And the officers did. No property was 
safe. The street tramways English 
owned and managed, were confiscated 
and run by the First Chief and his 
officers. The railroads, the express 
companies, were seized and operated 
for war revenue. Houses, automobiles, 
horses, pianos, furniture, ornaments, 
clothing, were taken over, used, sold, or 
destroyed as suited the fancy of the 
moment and the individual. The sub- 
merged 80 per cent., as represented by 
the Carranzista soldiery, slept on the 
concrete floors of the patios of the lux- 
urious houses occupied by their self-de- 
nying officers, and waited on them; the 
others of the submerged 80 per cent, 
recognised in this, their advertised 
" deliverance," only a new name for a 



When Carranza Came to Town 129 

game with which they had long been 
famiHar. 

It was a shock to the credulous; it 
led to the disagreements which finally 
resulted in the unnecessary break with 
Villa, — who had won the strategic bat- 
tles of the campaign, was valuable, and 
could have been handled ; and it plunged 
the land into an orgy of robbing, kill- 
ing, and raping, such as it had never 
been subjected to. 

And to this miserable period el pu- 
eblo, the lowly for whose " freedom and 
happiness " it was inaugurated, contin- 
ued as usual the prey of official thiev- 
ery and the victims of soldier lust who 
made no distinction so far as could be 
seen between the " enemy " and these 
people of the land, their own people, 
innocent of political animus or active 
hostile act. 

As I rode from Tehuacan to Espe- 
ranza to get around a cut in the rail- 
road line made by a band of ex-federals 
that had gone on the warpath again, 
as the only resort left after their over- 
tures for peace had been rejected, I 
stopped to feed and rest my horse at 
Tlacotepec. It was a little Indian vil- 
lage which lay on the road of both the 



130 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

federals and the Carranza troops, and 
had paid heavy toll within three days. 
The federals had done little damage, 
but the constitutionalists broke open 
houses, helped themselves to whatever 
caught their eye, and, disregarding the 
earnest request of the villagers that 
they be permitted to cut and bring feed 
for the soldiers' horses, turned the ani- 
mals into the corn fields and of course 
caused irremediable damage. One man 
told me he had hid his daughter all day 
in a corn stack to keep her out of sight 
of the soldiers who raped the women 
wherever they could lay hands on them. 

Another night and at another time in 
riding across the San Luis Potosi line 
into Coahuila I passed a small Mexican 
ranch where all the little belongings of 
the owner's family had been burned and 
the daughter carried off. 

General Pablo Gonzales, who headed 
Carranza's southward move before the 
advance of Villa, stopped a time at 
Pachuca and while he issued manifestos 
breathing patriotism and love for his 
people, his soldiers looted the native 
shops and his officers preyed upon the 
women. 

A mother and her two daughters 



When Carranza Came to Town 131 

walking on the streets were accosted 
by an officer and a demand made for 
the elder daughter. The daughter ob- 
jecting, the officer seized her arm and 
when she and her mother set up an 
alarm soldiers were called and all three 
of the women taken into the quartel or 
barracks, where they were held until 
the next day. 

In the same town under the same 
Carranza general a native walking with 
his wife was shot down in cold blood 
by an officer who had tried to take his 
wife from him and been resisted. 

When Obregon entered Guadalajara 
he harangued the people on the peace 
and justice of the constitutionalist 
cause, hanging over the school doors 
that motto of Benito Juarez — " re- 
spect for the rights of others is peace." 
With this sentiment securely nailed up 
and a discourse on the devotion of his 
generals to the interests of the people, 
delivered, said generals proceeded to 
give a practical exhibition of that re- 
gard. They lodged the troops and the 
horses in the public institutions, soiling 
and damaging them ; confiscated auto- 
mobiles and horses, broke into houses, 
taking and distributing the furniture 



13£ Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

and clothing among their followers, 
looted the shops; and finally opened a 
store for the sale of the booty thus 
gathered. 

At Texcoco a constitutionalist Colo- 
nel seeing one day a girl on the street 
that pleased his eye, sent his orderly 
after and fetched her; for no father 
can stand in the way of the officers' 
lust without paying for it with his life, 
and everywhere the poor people know 
it. This girl was used by the officer 
for a few days, and then turned over 
to his orderly. In the same town an- 
other officer saw a girl on a balcony 
as he passed, but this girl had also seen 
the officer and when his orderly came 
later there had been an exodus from 
town of the remaining women and girls 
to the City of Mexico. 

The Mexican part owner of a mining 
property on the edge of Hidalgo had 
his fifteen year old daughter taken off 
and violated by the Constitutionalists, 
after which he was charged with being 
a Zapatista and thrown into jail! 

These are but typical cases of what 
happened wherever the " patriots " 
roamed. 

The beans and corn and cattle of 



When Carranza Came to Town 133 

the natives were as little exempt as their 
women. One of the choice perquisites 
which these patriotic generals gathered 
at the expense of the people for whose 
" betterment we fight " was through 
control of the sale of all cattle. Those 
owning cattle were commanded under 
penalty of confiscation to bring them to 
the general in their section. The gen- 
eral set his own price, less than could 
be got in the open market, for hide and 
meat, and sold to the army or elsewhere 
at a handsome profit for himself. 
There was no escape from this market 
and no redress. No one else than he 
was permitted to either buy or sell; if 
any attempted it their stock was con- 
fiscated — and very likely they lost 
other property also, for in these days 
when the army is the law of the land, 
to disobey an unjust or whimsical or- 
der is to become a man marked, and fi- 
nally to lose everything at the hands of 
these brave sons of their country for 
daring to oppose the will of the gen- 
eral. Such a one was welcomed in ev- 
ery section because he " legalised " dep- 
redations. 

General Gonzales, of Pachuca ill 
fame and who later was made Com- 



134j Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

mander of the Federal District, came 
to be almost a cattle king. While he 
was in the Tampico district he and his 
staff confiscated — stole — cattle to 
the amount of full $30,000 gold, from 
the foreign companies in the neighbour- 
hood. Theirs was often too a whole- 
sale hide industry. At such times they 
shot the cattle in the fields, stripped off 
the hides and left the carcass on the 
ground to rot. Meanwhile the poor of 
Tampico went without meat ! 

In town the Governors also had a 
look in on the looting. One of the most 
active in this game was Coss of Puebla, 
sometime mule driver in Coahuila, who 
found no commercial till too humble to 
rifle, and brooked no interference with- 
out showing his displeasure. There 
was, for example, a pawnbroker from 
whom Coss had taken jewelry, dia- 
monds, to the amount of 100,000 pesos, 
but who, through some influence or 
other, got an order from the military 
commander directing Coss to return 
the loot. Most of it was given back, 
but the Governor kept on that pawn- 
broker's track until he at last ruined 
him. 

On a night while I was in Puebla the 



When Carranza Came to Town 135 

local University officers, and all the 
students in the building at the time, had 
been arrested because some of the Gov- 
ernor's loot scouts in searching the 
vaults of the cathedral for treasure, 
had found bones — no doubt the bones 
of some faithful padre long since passed 
to his rest and thus honoured by being 
buried on the scene of his life's work. 

Robbing the church " for the peo- 
ple," by the way, is and has always been 
the cry of the revolutionists, but no 
profit of it has ever reached the peo- 
ple, whose share on the contrary has 
been loss of the hospitals and other 
charitable institutions up-kept by the 
church. 

It was not necessary to have taken 
part in any of the demonstrations of 
any of the many factions, to come un- 
der the displeasure of a constitutional 
general. Reputable Mexican citizens 
like Yanez, Irigoyen, and Alcala of Chi- 
huahua were killed by Villa and the 
Carranza generals, merely for belong- 
ing to the educated class. Men who 
had never taken any share in the poli- 
tics of their country were hunted down, 
robbed, and murdered. It was so ev- 
erywhere. 



136 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

The foreigners also paid their price 
to the constitutionalists. 

When Pablo Gonzales of the Carran- 
zista forces left Mexico City at the 
first coming of the Zapatistas, he re- 
treated to Pachuca, where he settled 
down to enjoy himself in that rich min- 
ing town, having incidentally an- 
nounced himself as the one real presi- 
dent of the several then in the running. 

First, there was of course need of 
horses, so his soldiers confiscated all 
they^ could find belonging to local Mex- 
ican mining companies and then set out 
to gather in some fine mules and other 
stock belonging to an American out- 
fit. This company however had several 
native guards on duty who warned the 
Gonzales thieves to keep away ; and in 
the fight that ensued one of the looters 
was killed as he rode off on a mule. 
And the result.'^ The guard just es- 
caped being shot for defending his mas- 
ter's property and the American com- 
pany was fined or rather forced to 
pay as tribute to Gonzales twenty-five 
thousand pesos ! 

At another one of the three largest 
mining towns in the country, the 
English company had shut down its 



When Carranza Came to Town 187 

mill because it could not do business, 
and had but recently recovered some 
fifty or more bars of bullion to which 
Carranza had taken a fancy and relin- 
quished with reluctance only under 
pressure. The company could get no 
dependable guarantee that its future 
product would not be again stolen, 
could get no cars for shipping, so it 
closed its plant. Nevertheless it con- 
tinued to employ a considerable number 
of men on half time just pottering 
around on various odd jobs, solely for 
the purpose of helping the men. The 
jefe de armas, of whom every district 
has one, and who is the local boss and 
district military chief, and, together 
with pulque, the greatest curse of the 
country, began stirring up trouble ; he 
threatened the superintendent, made 
demands on the company, and finally 
incited the men to strike. 

Of course the men were prime for a 
strike, being on half time — and en- 
tirely unappreciative of the company's 
generous spirit in giving them work at 
all when it was out of pocket — so 
they sent a committee to the Carranza 
Governor, who came to camp and com- 
manded the superintendent to put the 



138 Wliafs the Matter zcitJi Mexico? 

men on full time and start the mill. 
But the jefe was not satisfied; he con- 
tinued to make himself extremely of- 
fensive, running in and out of the mill 
and going so far as to tell the superin- 
tendent that if he discharged any man 
he " would put him back at work and 
make it d — disagreeable for you." 

In Oaxaca Carranza ordered an 
American owned brewery which had 
closed because it could not meet its ex- 
penses on the depreciated money, to 
open and to keep prices as formerly 
notwithstanding to do so spelled ruin 
for the owner. 

At Puebla Governor Coss was issuing 
decrees daily. Merchants were ordered 
to sell their merchandise at the same 
price as that asked in 1912 regardless 
of the intervening losses, and the drop 
in value of the peso. Merchants were 
shipping through five different customs 
houses while the duties levied on the 
same class of exports varied from 
three-quarters to ten centavos a kilo, 
according to the grafting habit of the 
Coss under chief running it. 

In the City of Mexico the street rail- 
way company fell a victim to an in- 
spired strike. In the municipal office 



When Carranza Came to Toii>n 139 

the company's lawyer told the Gov- 
ernor he had five hundred old employees 
that wished to return to work and asked 
police protection. " And I have one 
thousand soldiers to prevent them re- 
turning," was the Governor's pre-con- 
stitutional reply. 

I sat one night in the little Zaca- 
tecas plaza at the side of the curiously 
and ornately decorated old church, lis- 
tening to the sorrowful tale of an 
American miner who had been cleaned 
out so completely he was actually living 
with one of his peons, eating his corn 
and beans until the railroad opened 
and he could go north. He was fifty 
years of age, had lived in Mexico 
twenty years, knew the language, the 
country, the people, and liked them all. 
His small savings had been put into a 
mining claim he had found and filed on. 
That was his " stake," to be realised on 
with the further opening of the coun- 
try. Then came the revolution. 

Now there w^as no work to be had 
and the enormous increase in mine 
taxes meant that he must forfeit his 
property; he could not even reach, 
much less work his mine. And so with 
his stake lost he was eating the corn 



140 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

of his peon, looking for a chance to 
beat his way to the border — and what 
do then, a man of fifty with the last half 
of his life spent in the country from 
which he was a fugitive ! 

An Englishman who had his every 
dollar in a mine and had been doing 
very well on his shipments to the 
smelter, told me he was, as I knew to 
be true, selling cigarettes around the 
town in order to get enough money to 
pay for his meals. And meantime he 
had over twenty thousand dollars' 
worth of ore which had been made ready 
and could not be shipped. 

The big power plant at Necaxa which 
had given employment at a good wage 
to thousands of Mexicans, had enabled 
mines and industries in and around 
the city to operate much more cheaply, 
was closed down b}^ the revolution after 
an enormous expenditure. 

And so the story ran over all stricken 
Mexico. 



Under Pre-Constitutional 
Conditions 

THE result of this patriotic move- 
ment carried over two years is (I 
am writing this paragraph September 
7, 1916) devastation of country, near 
cessation of business enterprise, par- 
tial famine, distress and disquiet among 
the " submerged 80 per cent " ; and 
graft, riches, despotism in the official 
class that set out to ease the lowly 
among their compatriots. 

Here is the recent comment of an 
intelligent Mexican on present condi- 
tions in his country: 

" Indians and peons, the middle and the upper 
classes as well, are starving, while the ' pa- 
triots ' — oh, those noble patriots who want 
nothing but the democratic welfare and happi- 
ness of the people — are enriching themselves 
rapidly; exchanging the loot for gold which 
they export and deposit in American banks to 
insure the future." 

This is a trifle overdrawn, for the 
Mexican can never paint a picture with- 
out more or less colour, but none the 
141 



142 WJiafs the Matter mtli Mexico? 

less it is a fact that the members of the 
Carranza official family, including the 
army officers, are the only comfortable 
folk in Mexico; and it is also a fact 
that constitutional government seems 
farther off than it did a little over 
two years ago when Carranza first came 
into Mexico City. 

Whatever there is of tangible prog- 
ress is towards oligarchy rather than 
towards democracy. Carranza has 
made himself and his group the law of 
the land; he dictates prices, taxes, 
wages, with grave assurance and nar- 
row view; his monetary decrees read 
like the emanations of a mad house. 
The repudiation by his Government of 
its own money for the payment of pub- 
lic dues, the nullification of existing 
notes of large value — never in all his- 
tory has there been anything to equal 
it in lunacy and knavery. And his 
decree threatening practical seizure or 
foreclosure for those merchants who, 
to escape ruin through this financial 
legerdemain, proposed to close their 
doors, shows no comprehension of the 
national problem and no thought, at 
least no sane thought, to help his 
people. 



Pre-Constitutional Conditions 143 

Let us review Carranza's dizzy rec- 
ord in making and unmaking the peso. 
In September, 1913, he published a de- 
cree authorising himself to issue an " in- 
terior loan " to cover the expenses of 
the revolution in the form of fiat money. 
The amount announced was 4,000,000 
pesos, nominal, and was considerably 
over issued. It was also easily coun- 
terfeited. The decree made it a crime 
of any Mexican or resident foreigner 
to discount or refuse to take it. There- 
fore it was forced on the public for 
valuable provender, most of it at fifty 
cents United States gold per peso, as 
exchange had not begun to fall when it 
was first issued. 

In December, 1914, without notice 
Carranza declared this issue all void. 
It is true that on September 17, 1915, 
a notice did appear that Monclova bills 
presented at the light house in Vera- 
cruz, whence the prudent " liberator " 
had retired, would be exchanged for the 
new issues if offered before the end of 
the month, but the time was so short 
and communication so difficult, that 
practically none was able to take ad- 
vantage of this brief respite. So the 
issue became a total loss to the public, 



144* Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

and a total free gain to the Carranza 
Government. 

About May, 1914, another issue, 
*' ejercito " money, was brought out. 
This was uncertain in total issue. 
Side by side with it circulated the 
lithographed " Gobierno Provisional " 
money, as well as paper produced in 
abundance on a cheap press in Calle 
Cinco de Mayo, Veracruz. Carran- 
za's decree limited this paper issue to 
250,000,000 pesos face value; lately he 
has admitted there was an over issue 
and that 750,000,000 of such " money " 
was put forth, but there is little doubt 
that the sum actually floated on the 
public was three times that figure. 

This paper issue was turned over 
with prodigality to the generals and 
special agents of Carranza, who used it 
for payment of troops, and purchase 
of supplies. But a great use of it was 
to " buy " local foodstuffs — beans, 
garbanza, etc., that could be sold in 
Cuba, Spain, and the United States for 
the real money which they had to pay 
in advance for ammunition. 

Parenthetically I will say here, it is 
well established that a considerable 
source of income to Carranza officials 



Pre-Constitutional Conditions 145 

has come from the fodstuffs which 
have been taken, not bought, from the 
people and shipped out. While the 
American Red Cross was taking in 
food to the half starved people of the 
northeastern states, this game was in 
process. Red Cross ships discharging 
for the people, and Carranzista ships 
loading to take away and sell what came 
from the people, were common at a 
single wharf ! And it is still going on 
and will go on as long as the beans hold 
out, and the United States permits its 
ammunition to go into a prostrate 
country where the little the people have 
is liable to be taken from them. The 
Red Cross may be forced out of busi- 
ness, but the " double cross " is always 
working in Mexico. 

Returning to Carranza's monetary 
system : — a new " uncounterfeitable " 
issue began to arrive in December, 1915. 
There had been much question as to how 
it was to be put in circulation, the 
problem being to make about 2,500,000 
pesos fit into 500,000,000 new issue. 
Carranza and Cabrera, his Secretary of 
Finance, both declared the existing is- 
sue to be a " sacred debt of the revolu- 
tion," and that the new issue would be 



146 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

exchanged peso for peso for the old 
one. 

When the time came, in the course 
of a series of rapidly appearing and 
contradictory decrees, it was finally de- 
cided not to exchange the old money — 
the " sacred debt " — but to get the new 
issue in circulation through the pay- 
ment of officials, etc., making it obliga- 
tory on business men to mark all prices 
and pay all labourers on a gold basis, 
and to make payments at five of the 
new issue for one Mexican gold ; or ten 
to one American money. 

Then the old issue, the aforesaid 
^' sacred debt," was absolutely voided 
with the exception that persons were 
allowed to deposit their old bills with 
the Treasury for a mere receipt with- 
out engagement for reimbursement at 
any fixed time. 

To get a good understanding of what 
this means in Mexico, let us suppose 
that the United States should suddenly 
declare all silver certificates void. Then 
all bank bills. Then all Federal re- 
serve notes. Then that it should issue 
a new currency guaranteed against 
counterfeiting, reading only " United 
States of America (so many) Dollars " 



Pre-Constitutional Conditions 147 

without reference to law or promise to 
make good. Suppose that everybody 
in the United States was morally sure 
that as soon as this remarkable new 
issue was out it would be declared void. 
What chance to do business would any 
of us have? That is what Carranza's 
monetary decrees and the " bilimbique " 
money have done for Mexican business, 
— bilimbique being the name given to 
the Constitutionalist peso printed on 
paper, to distinguish it from real 
money. 

Indeed the acts of the Carranzistas 
suggest a group of unlearned, inexperi- 
enced irreligious anarchists, come to 
new power. Nearly every ruling re- 
veals crass economic ignorance and ig- 
nores the democratic principle by which 
they claim to be actuated. 

On June 11, 1916, a decree was is- 
sued by Carranza as " First Chief of 
the Constitutionalist Army and in 
Charge of the Executive Power of the 
United States," nullifying all acts ex- 
ecuted by private parties in which 
" functionaries " (including notaries 
and brokers ) of the " Huertista and 
the Convencionista " (this was the 
Aguas Calientes convention govern- 



148 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

merit) "usurping administrations and 
of the alleged governments of Oaxaca 
and Yucatan, may have intervened or 
participated." 

This decree covers practically every- 
thing that affects the personal status 
of citizens and foreigners, excepting 
only the births and deaths and those 
marriages where children have been 
born or where one of the parties has 
died. It also covers judicial procedure 
in civil matters, including estates, and 
in some penal cases, revalidation of 
which may be had at the discretion of 
the Government if asked for on or be- 
fore December 30, 1916, and provided 
the stamp tax is paid over again ! 

On the same date, another decree was 
issued by the same " First Chief," re- 
establishing in part the Circuit and Dis- 
trict Federal Courts provided for by 
the law of December 16, 1908, and its 
amendments (prior to February 22, 
1913), but "with the various modifica- 
tions originating out of the present 
circumstances existing in the coun- 
try " ! 

Of the courts to be re-established the 
decree specifically excludes the Supreme 
Court ; " this is exacted," the decree 



P re-Constitutional Conditions 149 

sa3^s, " by the pre-constitutionality of 
the Government " 1 but the decree gives 
certain powers of the Supreme Court to 
the " First Chieftainship." The great 
writ of " Amparo " is not re-established 
because " the constitutional order (or 
procedure) is in suspense," and " in- 
dividual guarantees are in suspense," as 
the decree says. 

With 90 per cent, of the mines idle 
and thousands upon thousands of Mexi- 
cans out of work on that account, Car- 
ranza recently decreed a new mining 
tax which increases the rate on the 
property thirty-seven times over what 
it had been, and adds the new feature 
of a 25 per cent, tax on the mines' out- 
put ! Taxes of mines in Mexico were 
already greater than anywhere else in 
the world; raising them still higher is 
quite likely to suspend operations in 
districts like Guanajuato, Zacatecas, 
and others which have been able only 
just to keep moving. It is another in- 
stance of Carranza's obstinate disre- 
gard of consequences to his own coun- 
try. Yet another instance of the des- 
perate effort making to get income, is 
the last June decree taxing banks of 
the first class from one to five thou- 



150 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

sand pesos a month, payable in national 
gold or silver. 

Never before has revolution in Mex- 
ico brought such widespread suffering 
and hopelessness, because of loot and 
destruction long sustained. Life is in- 
secure, property unprotected, there is 
no free press, no constitution, no con- 
structive effort bringing practical or 
helpful results, and the country is bank- 
rupt. 

Because the Americans have been 
forced out to so great an extent by 
their Government's abandonment of 
them, there is little work and wages are 
low ; and graft is the chief reason of 
the low wage. 

Take the Carranza run railways for 
instance. The merchant who wants to 
ship a carload must first pay the su- 
perintendent of the road up to six thou- 
sand bilimbiques before he will be able 
to get a car. Then the yard master 
must be tipped about two hundred bil- 
imbiques to move the car. Then the 
agent of the merchant must follow up 
the road — trains run only in daylight 
these days — and watch for the car on 
sidings. If it has been cut out, he must 
pay another two hundred to the local 



Pre-Constitutional Conditions 151 

patriot to get the car attached to an- 
other train. And so he follows it on 
to its destination. Thus the merchant 
through tips and graft pays the rail- 
road more than ever before. He must 
add the " extras " to his prices, but the 
railroad takes in only the regular old 
rate fixed in Mexican silver but paid in 
depreciated bilimbiques. Therefore lit- 
tle remains with which to pay the train- 
men. 

The only district where work con- 
ditions approached normal last May 
was at Tampico, where the lowest paid 
labourer in the oil fields received one 
dollar United States, or forty-two pesos 
bilimbiques. The railway locomotive 
engineers were being paid eighteen pesos 
bilimbiques ; and decided to strike. 
The leaders were arrested and taken to 
Monterrey, and it was announced they 
would be shot. But Carranza cannot 
afford to shoot an engineer ; they are 
scarce. However, the strike was put 
down by intimidation and to-day the 
government engineer receives less than 
half what American companies in the 
oil district pay their lowest peons. 

The chance to do business or earn 
wages has gone, except in the oil pro- 



152 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

ducing regions which continue at work 
because near the coast, and depending 
on private pipelines and steamers for 
transport, cannot be killed as all other 
industry has, through the government 
" ownership " of railways, and conse- 
quent grabbing of all the profits. 

Meanwhile the Casa del Obrero Mun- 
dial, which is the I. W. W. of Mexico, 
sends forth its wage raising mandates 
to the merchants, which has no other 
result than to lay off more and more 
men, as business is cut lower and lower. 

It would be interesting to trace the 
number and length of bank accounts 
held in the American border towns by 
the patriots across the line. 

Having in mind the battle cry of the 
Constitutionalists, " free land " and 
" death to all big business," the study 
of a circular sent out from Mexico City 
January 24, 1916, is most interesting. 
This circular, elaborately done, sets 
forth, that " taking into account the 
great development all the sources of 
wealth of the country will experience, 
as a consequence of the era of peace 
that has solidly begun "(!) "we have 
formed a company named: Company 
for the Encouragement of National 



P re-Constitutional Conditions 153 

Riches, Ltd., which we have the honour 
to communicate to you, asking you to 
take note of the signatures at the bot- 
tom." 

Now the " signatures at the bottom " 
include that of Niceforo Zambrano, who 
is Treasurer General of the Carranza 
Government, and Pablo Gonzales, who 
was Military Commander of the Fed- 
eral District at the time of the incor- 
poration of this company, and with 
whose cattle and other patriotic activi- 
ties at Tampico and Pachuca we are 
already familiar. 

The interesting feature of this docu- 
ment is the parallel it offers between 
these patriots and the ones they suc- 
ceeded; this is precisely the same old 
cientifico game of business-with-public 
office that the present brand of patriots 
came in to extirpate. 

Battle cries of " revolutions " are 
springes to catch woodcock. Porfirio 
Diaz came in on " no re-election," and 
succeeded himself for twenty-six years. 
Madero cried " effective suffrage and 
no re-election " and his own brother 
was preparing an amendment to the con- 
stitution whereby Francisco could suc- 
ceed himself for a full term " as he is 



154 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

only finishing out the unfinished term 
of Diaz." Felix Diaz shot Mexico City 
to pieces with the army he stole from 
Madero under the cry of " Peace and 
Justice." Carranza wiggled his way 
in through the help of our President se- 
cured by crying " constitution," and 
promptly on his arrival in Mexico City 
declared the Constitution inoperative, 
and a " Pre-constitutional period," 
which is the present status. 

President Wilson, who objected to 
Huerta because his government was 
"not constitutional" (see speech to 
Congress August 27, 1913), recognised 
the frankly non-constitutional govern- 
ment of Carranza. 

The revolutionary battle cry should, 
really be, " Quitate tu para que me 
ponga yo " — You get out so I can get 
in. 

Scanning the record then of this pre- 
constitutional governing group as it 
stands to-day, we find that: 

It has not restored the constitution. 

It has not restored the courts. 

It has not given freedom to the press. 

It is not protecting its own people 
or the foreigners from robbery by its 
own servants. 



P re-Constitutional Conditions 155 

It has used famine as a lever to fill 
its army. 

It has made business impossible by 
issuing bad money for good value, de- 
claring it void, and then repeating the 
process. 

As for the land division, the " free 
land " slogan of Madero, no government 
policy appears to have been decided 
upon, and it is true that the time is 
not propitious for giving men land 
which has nothing on it and when they 
have no work with which to earn some- 
thing to put anything on it. 

Twenty thousand acres is more than 
the total that have been divided and 
distributed, but the people are obliged 
to leave the land to get something to 
eat. To give the soldier land at the 
present time means that he will sell to 
the first officer who comes along with 
his pocket full of bilimbiques. 

The pre-constitutionalists are wont 
to liken themselves to the French Revo- 
lutionists. Except in the Mexican ap- 
proach to the record of bestiality set 
in 1792, the comparison is not well ven- 
tured. 

The French Revolution saved as well 
as spilled the very best of its blood, and 



156 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

developed a group of leaders of notable 
mentality and extraordinary construc- 
tive sense. The group of leaders in 
Mexico have conducted themselves like 
ignorant anarchists on an I. W. W. 
debauch. They have wrecked their 
Government and built none in its stead ; 
they have torn an economic fabric to 
shreds and show neither woof nor web 
of another. 

The French have great power of cor- 
porate organisation ; the Mexicans have 
none. 

The French have cohesion ; the Mexi- 
cans do not know the word's mean- 
ing. 

Patriotism in the French is a living 
white fire ; in the Mexicans it is red hot 
air. 

The plan of the French Revolution 
was definite, and its work constructive ; 
in Mexico we see neither practical defi- 
nition nor construction. 

Those that indorse the statements 
from Mexico on their face value can 
occupy themselves profitably seeking 
names in Mexico to place alongside of 
Mirabeau, Lafayette, Danton, Robes- 
pierre, St. Just, Carnot, Roland — 



P re-Constitutional Conditions 157 

which I choose at random from that 
gruesome yet wonderful period of 
French history. 

In Mexico, of those that appear to 
have the fortune of their country in 
the hollow of their hands, we see most 
frequently the name of Luis Cabrera. 
The First Chief's right hand man is so- 
cialistic, involved, and impractical; but 
he has an alert, clever mind and as 
lobbyist has few equals in or out of 
Mexico. He and Carranza are respon- 
sible for the nightmare of bilimbiques, 
which perhaps may be charged more to 
ignorance than to dishonesty. The one 
man Carranza had of financial training, 
Felicitas Villareal, he put in jail for 
being unwilling to sponsor this frenzied 
finance policy. Cabrera is a lawyer by 
profession a.nd an intriguer by nature. 
He is the one man of record, however, 
to have sought to remedy the land laws 
under Madero. 

Venustiano Carranza, like his best 
man, is also impractical, and he is, I be- 
lieve, personally honest ; but he is bump- 
tious, vain, obstinate, of small ability, 
and with no control over his men. The 
best thing to his credit is shutting the 



158 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

saloons on Sundays and holidays. He 
was a ranchero in Coahuila before be- 
ing " elected " local judge. He never 
studied in a law school. Later, for 
many years he was a Senator in the 
Senate of Porfirio Diaz, and was prom- 
ised the governorship of Coahuila. 
Diaz did not keep his word, and named 
a de la Pena, which affronted Carranza, 
and he joined the Madero revolution 
when it broke out. It is a mistake to 
say he was always the foe of the Cien- 
tificos; he tried in fact to get into the 
inner circle. 

Both Carranza and Cabrera have 
kept their word when force of circum- 
stance and the generals of their army 
permitted. 

Alvaro Obregon, Minister of War, 
was a small planter in Sonora and is 
probably the most stable and least im- 
pressionable man in the group, being 
at the same time one of but mediocre 
calibre. He is by far the best general 
in the Carranza army, and with Villa 
and Angeles one of the only three to 
reveal any ability in the field. He has 
shown himself narrow and brutal in 
dealing with his poor countrymen — 
his course in Mexico City being dis- 



P re-Constitutional Conditions 159 

tinctly reprehensible. He is no ad- 
mirer of Americans. 

Candido Aguilar, the Minister of 
Foreign Relations, is a man who saw his 
opportunity — and " done it." Apart 
from the ability he has shown at gather- 
ing pesos in the last couple of years he 
has none. He is ignorant but served 
Carranza faithfully and was rewarded 
by the governorship of the rich State 
of Veracruz, where he evidently made 
the most of the occasion, for he is now 
reported to be rich. 

Generals Luis Gutierrez and Fran- 
cisco Coss are about of the same type 
as Aguilar and equally alive to oppor- 
tunity. Coss we have already learned 
of as Governor of Puebla, where he 
made enough money to embark in the 
sisal business on a large scale at Sal- 
tillo with his friend Luis, who is a 
brother of Eulalio, of whom we have 
also heard at Aguas and Mexico City. 
Before he became a patriot he was a 
labourer in the maguey fields; now he 
has enough money to have put, it is 
said, one million pesos into business. 

Of General Pablo Gonzales we have 
also already heard much, and enough 
for our purpose. 



160 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

Palavlcini, " Minister of Education 
and Fine Arts," is a disciple of " Dr." 
Atl. 

" Dr." Atl, whom David Starr Jor- 
dan sponsored for Americans, is an en- 
thusiastic anarchist and the editor of a 
vicious anti-everything paper called the 
Accion Mundial, His first service to 
the " cause " was as confidential ad- 
viser to Zapata, to whom he gave his 
socialistic strain ; then he deserted to 
Carranza when Zapata's race appeared 
to him about run. Obregon used him 
as an instrument in his " castigation " 
of Mexico City in February, 1915, and 
for the organisation of the Casa del 
Obrero, the I. W. W. helpmate of the 
faithful. 



The Meditations of a Theorist 

IN March, 1913, the way was clear 
for a settlement of our troubles in 
Mexico. Retiring Secretary of State 
Knox had informed Huerta, just as 
Secretary Evarts had told Diaz thirty- 
seven years earlier, that recognition by 
the United States Government depended 
upon his putting his country in order ; 
the adjustment of pending claims, in- 
demnities for the murder and destruc- 
tion of American life and property, 
and guarantees against repetition. 

And now a man had been elected 
President on a platform which not only 
indorsed the traditional American pol- 
icy of Jefferson, Adams, Monroe — and 
of every national party since 1860 — 
but emphasised it by the following 
plank : 

" The constitutional rights of American citi- 
zens should protect them on our borders and go 
with them throughout the world, and every 
American citizen residing or having property 
in any foreign country is entitled to and must 
161 



162 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

be given the full protection of the United 
States Government, both for himself and for his 
property." 

The peace of Mexico, the safety of 
Americans in Mexico were in the hands 
of the new Democratic President, Wood- 
row Wilson. 

Facing this great responsibility, with 
the murder and the destruction un- 
checked, he announced a policy of pa- 
tience and hope. 

On August 4th, however, the Presi- 
dent forsook " watchful waiting " for 
active interference by a demand on Hu- 
erta for his retirement, made through 
John Lind, whom he sent as his per- 
sonal agent on this delicate mission to 
Mexico, knowing neither the people 
nor their language. And while Lind 
was on the road with his unusual pro- 
posal and after Huerta had been five 
months President of Mexico President 
Wilson sent the following message to 
Congress : 

*' I deem it my duty to exercise the authority 
conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 
1912, to see to it that neither side to the struggle 
now going on in Mexico receive any assistance 
from this side the border ... by forbidding 
the exportation of arms or munitions of war 
of any kind from the United States to any part 



The Meditations of a Theorist 163 

of the Republic of Mexico. We cannot in the 
circumstances be the partisans of either party 
to the contest that now distracts Mexico or con- 
stitute ourselves the virtual umpire between 
them." 

That was sound American doctrine 
and had been expressed by Presidents 
Monroe and Cleveland, by Jefferson, 
Webster, Hay, Root, and the Hague 
Conference of 1907. 

The entire text of the arbitrary de- 
mand which Lind conveyed, having been 
given to the press in Washington dur- 
ing its consideration by Huerta, the lat- 
ter became obdurate in the face of co- 
ercion thus made public. Whereupon 
Lind made the extraordinary offer to 
Gamboa, Huerta's Foreign Secretary, 
to procure money for the pressing 
needs of the Mexican Government, if 
he and his Cabinet associates would ac- 
cede to Huerta's elimination ! 

Gamboa's official reply to this bribe 
was : " No loan from American bank- 
ers could be large enough to induce the 
Mexican Government to renounce the 
sovereign rights of the nation and to 
permit its dignity to be lessened." 

Upon which the press of all Mexico 
howled with derisive glee at the purity 
of the American Government and the 



164i Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

statesmanship of its representatives. 
And a humorous weekly was started 
in Mexico City, called Mister Lind; 
" Mister " being the Mexican form of 
address when they wish to show con- 
tempt for one of their own people. 
Nothing having resulted, Lind went 
home after waiting anxiously and cour- 
ageously out of arms' reach at Vera- 
cruz, for the word which never came. 

But Americans in Mexico experienced 
results from the Lind mission. Menace 
to their lives and depredations upon 
their property increased alarmingly ; to 
such an extent that Secretary Bryan 
instructed the Consul General in Mex- 
ico to notify all officials, military or 
civil, exercising authority, that they 
would " be held strictly accountable for 
any harm done to Americans, or for 
injury to their property." 

Despite this warning, however, out- 
rages continued, and the United States 
taking no step to follow up its recent 
" warning " or to enforce compliance 
with the notice its President had served 
upon Mexico, they increased. Instead 
of calling upon Huerta to safeguard 
Americans, as the treaty between the 
two countries required him to do, Presi- 



The Meditations of a Theorist 165 

dent Wilson called upon his citizens to 
leave the country. Thus making it 
clear to the Mexican mind that insist- 
ence on the protection of its nation- 
als, on which all treaties are based, had 
been discarded by the American Gov- 
ernment for " diplomatic welfare 
work." 

On October 27, 1913, in his Mobile 
speech. President Wilson supplemented 
his request to Congress for a " free 
hand in Mexico " by declaring " human 
rights, national integrity and oppor- 
tunity as against material interests is 
the issue which we now have to face." 
And on the next day, Mr. Bryan paused 
long enoufi^h on his lecture tour to an- 
nounce through the press that " Eng- 
land, France and Germany had agreed 
to take no action (as to Mexico) until 
the United States had announced its 
policy." 

Thus America became Mexico's spon- 
sor before the world. 

Two months later, through his mes- 
sage to Congress, came announcement 
of another change in the President's 
policy since his last official communica- 
tion to Congress about three months 
before. Then he had said we must not 



166 Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

interfere, now he declared Huerta must 
go. 

On February 3, 1914, he added deed 
to word by raising the embargo on 
arms and ammunition which Taft had 
wisely placed in March, 1912, as the 
most effective deterrent to extended 
revolution and slaughter, and which 
Wilson on August ST, 1913, had said, 
" I deem it my duty " to continue and 
enforce. And in April, 1914, the Presi- 
dent pursued his policy of interference 
to the limit of an armed attack and a 
landing upon Veracruz. 

To exact from Huerta a delayed sa- 
lute of the American flag and to pre- 
vent the landing of a shipload of arms 
for him, was the public avowal of the 
President at the time. The cargo of 
arms was landed and reached Huerta, 
the flag was not saluted, and on July 
16, 1916, Franklin K. Lane, the Presi- 
dent's intimate and Secretary of the 
Interior, openly confessed in the New 
York World that the Administration 
had abandoned the long established 
American principle of non-interference, 
declaring " we didn't go to Veracruz 
to force Huerta to salute the flag. We 
did go there to show Mexico that we 



The Meditations of a Theorist 167 

were in earnest in our demand that Hu- 
erta must go." 

With our troops at Veracruz for 
this purpose, and rival political fac- 
tions fighting all over Mexico, the Presi- 
dent said through S. G. Blythe in the 
Saturday Evening Post, May 23, 1914, 
" all the unrest in that country . . . 
was a fight for the land — just that 
and nothing more." 

Now followed the A. B. C. confer- 
ence with its to be expected disregard 
by Carranza and its thorough discred- 
itable contravention of promise by 
Bryan. 

Bryan had promised the mediators 
and the Huerta delegates, that during 
the Conference he would absolutely em- 
bargo all shipments of arms to the 
Constitutionalists. Five days later the 
Antilla sailed direct from New York 
to Tampico with 3,000,000 rounds of 
cartridges. Six other shipments fol- 
lowed in three different boats. These 
boats however were, on the advice of 
John Lind (as shown by carbon copies 
of letters found in the office of Shirby 
Hopkins, a Carranza lawyer, at Wash- 
ington, and not denied by Lind) de- 
spatched to Havana, putting in to 



168 WJiafs the Matter with Mexico? 

Tampico from " stress of weather," 
and were reported to the State Depart- 
ment by its Consul ! 

As a result of the landing at Vera- 
cruz and the failure of the A. B. C. 
Conference to reach any tangible con- 
clusion, Huerta finally did " go " ; and 
the contending parties which had been 
three increased to half a dozen. 

Meanwhile, Americans in Mexico 
viewed the unsupported demands, the 
empty threats, the landing at Vera- 
cruz, with dismay. They had not 
wished intervention, except in so far 
as it appeared to be the only way out 
of the mess ; they had wanted only pro- 
tection and Mexico made to realise that 
she must respect her treaty obligations. 
Their lives had been endangered by their 
Government's unwarranted interference 
with Mexico's internal affairs, and such 
protection as they had received at the 
time of the unheralded Veracruz landing 
was given by English and German naval 
officers, when with Tampico full of refu- 
gees Secretary of Navy Daniels with 
characteristic efficiency had ordered the 
United States cruisers to sea seven 
miles from the harbour, where they had 
been lying for months against just such 



The Meditations of a Theorist 169 

an emergency. A town full of Ameri- 
cans in danger, and their gunboats 
sent out of reach to sea ! 

With this culminating evidence of the 
Government's lack of regard for its cit- 
izens, it became an open season in Mex- 
ico on Americans and their property. 
They were arrested on trivial charges, 
forced to give money ; murdered ; their 
property everywhere at the mercy of 
the looting soldiery, which knew by this 
time it had no need to fear government 
displeasure, either its own or that across 
the border. 

There was no safety for Americans 
in Mexico and no justice for them at 
Washington. The only men that could 
reach the President's ear or that of 
his yodelling Secretary, were the revolu- 
tionary agents. Clean handed Ameri- 
cans of long established business integ- 
rity and unquestioned patriotism were 
neither heard nor even received with 
courtesy. The President had " service 
for humanity " but none for Americans ; 
in his burning desire to effect a " spir- 
itual union " with the Mexicans he had 
abandoned twenty thousand of his own 
people and departed from the long 
maintained American principle against 



170 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

meddling with the domestic affairs of a 
neighbour. 

The Monroe Doctrine does not pre- 
scribe the right to dictate the form of 
government in Latin America, only that 
it shall be free of Old World domina- 
tion. But even earlier the principle of 
non-interference was the ruling one. 

Secretary of State Jefferson in 1793 
wrote : " We surely cannot deny to 
any nation that right whereon our own 
Government is founded — that every 
one may govern itself according to 
whatever form it pleases, and change 
these forms at its own will and that it 
may transact its business with foreign 
nations through whatever organ it 
thinks proper, whether king, conven- 
tion, assembly, committee, president or 
anything else it may choose." 

Mr. Webster in 1852 repeated the 
same fundamental principle : " From 
President Washington's time down to 
the present day it has been a principle 
always acknowledged by the United 
States, that every nation possesses a 
right to govern itself according to its 
own will, to change institutions at dis- 
cretion and to transact its business 



The Meditations of a Theorist 171 

through whatever agents it may think 
proper to employ." 

Secretary of State Hay in 1899 in- 
structed our Venezuelan Minister to 
recognise Castro " if the provisional 
government is effectively administering 
government of nation and in a position 
to fulfil international obligations." 

The United States Senate in 1907 in 
ratifying the arbitration convention of 
the Hague Conference resolved that : 
" Nothing contained in this convention 
shall be so construed as to require the 
United States of America to depart 
from its traditional policy of not in- 
truding upon, interfering with or en- 
tangling itself in the political questions 
of policy or internal administration of 
any foreign state." 

Therefore w^hen President Wilson set 
out upon his campaign to drive Huerta 
out of Mexico he was going against 
both American principle and prece-- 
dence ; he was an offender against the 
law America has contributed to the in- 
ternational code. And in the abandon- 
ment of his nationals in a country in 
anarchy he made a departure which was 
so novel and so discreditable to a great 



172 WhaVs the Matter with Mexico? 

nation that it will live long as a black 
page in the history of the American 
people. 

William M. Evarts, our one time 
great Secretary of State, said : " The 
first duty of a government is to protect 
life and property. This is a para- 
mount obligation. For this govern- 
ments are instituted and governments 
neglecting or failing to perform it be- 
come worse than useless." 

And John Fiske, the distinguished 
political economist, says : " A govern- 
ment touches the lowest point of ig- 
nominy when it confesses its inability to 
protect the lives and property of its 
citizens." 

But Woodrow Wilson said in his 
Shadow Lawn speech accepting renom- 
ination by the Democratic party early 
in September : " Many serious wrongs 
against the property, many irreparable 
wrongs against the persons of Ameri- 
cans have been committed within the 
territory of Mexico herself. . . . We 
could not act directly in that matter 
ourselves." 

So the 1912 plank in the Democratic 
platform, and the " strictly account- 
able " telegram of 1913, and the June, 



^n 



The Meditations of a Theorist 17 

1916, "America first" talk, — were all 
" scraps of paper." Protecting its own 
citizens has been the first care of all 
nations. We, on the other hand, have 
introduced the new policy of abandon- 
ing our own citizens in a publicly pro- 
claimed attempt to serve aliens in their 
own country. 

In 1915, with the country in a riot 
of anarchy, the President, who had 
been favouring Villa in his opposition 
to Carranza, changed again, and tak- 
ing chances on the Carranza side, fi- 
nally in October, 1915, recognised 
him, while investigation was pend- 
ing of an atrocious murder — commit- 
ted ten days before — of an American 
by a Constitutionalist soldier who had 
cut off and displayed his head on a 
pole for public gaze 1 

Recognised by this great Govern- 
ment without his giving guarantee for 
the protection of American life or prop- 
erty in Mexico ! 

Then in 1916 came the border 
troubles, the raids quickly following 
the President's stubborn disregard of 
previous recorded experience and the 
advice of men who knew the border 
and Mexicans and adjured him not to 



174 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

permit Obregon's troops to pass 
through American territory in pursuit 
of Villa. Santa Isabel, Columbia, 
Glenn Springs, Parral, Carrizal — one 
after the other, from January to June, 
bringing loss of life and further hu- 
miliation and insolent notes and un- 
friendly acts from Carranza, 

Here again the President was not 
without established precedent to guide 
him. In 1876, when Diaz came into 
power, Mexico was in a turbulent state 
and the border alive with bandits. The 
Mexican had the same temper and habit 
then as now, there was the same brand 
of patriots, the same subterfuges ; but 
the Administration of 1876 saw its duty 
more clearly than that of 1913. 

President Hayes declined to recog- 
nise Diaz until he had put his country 
in order, and Secretary Evarts made 
Diaz understand that no injury to 
American life or property would be tol- 
erated. When injury came, as at first 
it did, reparation was demanded — and 
exacted. Diaz realised he had to put 
his country in order to secure recogni- 
tion and keep it in order to escape the 
just might of the United States. And 
the border troubles ceased. 



The Meditations of a Theorist 175 

In 1914 President Wilson declared 
we had gone into Mexico to '' serve 
humanity," but on January 8, 1915, in 
his speech at Indianapolis he had " an- 
other emotion of sympathy " which 
bade him say that he was " for the 80 
per cent." and that they had the " right 
to spill as much blood as they pleased." 
We have already seen what that poor 
80 per cent, is getting. 

After using the army and navy of 
the United States in April, 1914, to 
make Mexico understand that " Huerta 
must go," President Wilson at the Press 
Club dinner last June, 1916, asked, " do 
you think that it is our duty to carry 
self-defence to the point of dictation 
in the affairs of another people? " 

And with the long record of looted 
and murdered Americans in Mexico un- 
avenged, the repeated and humiliating 
disregard of his demands, ultimatums 
and messages, the President before a 
gathering of advertising men in the 
same month (June, 1916) delivered 
himself of this fine and stirring senti- 
ment: 

" I believe America, the country which we put 
first in our thoughts, should be ready in every 
point of policy and of action to vindicate at 



176 WhaVs the Matter with Mexico? 

whatever cost the principles of liberty, of jus- 
tice, and of humanity to which we have been 
devoted from the first." 

With the principles of liberty, jus- 
tice, and humanity being outraged by 
torpedos on the high seas, by bullets 
in Mexico, by assault upon our very 
territory, the President told the world 
we are " too proud to fight." 

At Detroit on July 10, 1916, after 
Santa Isabel, Columbus, Glenn Springs, 
Parral, Carrizal, the President said, " I 
refuse to butt in on Mexican affairs." 

On June 20, 1916, Secretary of State 
Lansing addressed a note to Carranza 
opening with the following shameless 
recital : 

". . . the lives of Americans and other aliens 
have been sacrificed; vast properties developed 
by American enterprise and capital have been 
destroyed or rendered nonproductive; bandits 
have been permitted to roam at will through the 
territory contiguous to the United States and 
to seize without punishment or without effective 
attempt at punishment, the property of Ameri- 
cans, while the lives of citizens of the United 
States who ventured to remain in Mexican ter- 
ritory or to return there to protect their in- 
terests have been taken and in some cases 
barbarously taken, and the murderers have 
neither been apprehended nor brought to jus- 
tice. ... It would be tedious to recount in- 
stance after instance, outrage after outrage, 
atrocity after atrocity, to illustrate the true 



The Meditations of a Theorist 177 

nature and extent of the widespread conditions 
of lawlessness and violence which have pre- 
vailed. . . . the lower Rio Grande has been 
thrown into a state of constant apprehension 
and turmoil because of frequent and sudden 
incursions into American territory, and depre- 
dations and murders on American soil by 
Mexican bandits who have taken the lives and 
destroyed the property of American citizens, 
sometimes carrying American citizens across the 
international boundary v/ith the booty seized. 
American garrisons have been attacked at 
night, American soldiers killed and their equip- 
ment and horses stolen; American ranches have 
been raided, property stolen and destroyed, and 
American trains wrecked and plundered." 

And no reparation exacted. Was 
there ever published a more humiliating 
confession of impotency or indifference 
for its name and its citizens by a great 
nation ! 

Mr. Lansing quotes the words of Sec- 
retary Evarts of " protection " for its 
citizens and their property being " a 
paramount duty of government," and 
recording the failure of the Mexican 
Government to check the outrages re- 
cited, says : " It only makes stronger 
the duty of the United States to pre- 
vent them, for if the Government of 
Mexico cannot protect the lives and 
property of Americans, exposed to at- 
tack from Mexicans, the Government 



178 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

of the United States is in duty bound 
so far as it can, to do so." 

Had the concluding paragraph of 
this note been written three years be- 
fore, and enforced once, Americans 
would not have been murdered, nor the 
" submerged 80 per cent." ravaged to 
destitution. Carranza has never re- 
plied to this note; he evaded its ar- 
raignment by proposing the commission 
idea. He has never cleared himself of 
responsibility for Carrizal. 

Yet in the face of this experience, 
with millions of American dollars lost 
and American citizens denied the pro- 
tection of their Government, President 
Wilson suggests a loan for the bank- 
rupt Carranza Government ! And 
Carranza, not to be outdone by his 
" great and good " friend in working 
that easy thing, the listless American 
public, wants two hundred million dol- 
lars as an emollient for his lacerated 
feelings and the severe loss his Govern- 
ment has sustained through our " inva- 
sion " of his territory, and the aid of 
our late lamented ex-Secretary of State 
and President Wilson gave Villa. 



DUM-DUMS IN THE NaME OF HuMANITY 

PERHAPS, however, our course in 
the arms traffic in Mexico is the 
most baffling and not the least discred- 
itable page in the storj of this " policy 
of peace " and " service to humanity " 
which, under its President's guidance, 
the United States entered upon in Feb- 
ruary, 1914. Space is wanting here to 
recount its numerous and varied mani- 
festations, but, briefly, it is a matter 
of Congressional Record that the 
United States has sent upwards of ten 
million of dollars' worth of munitions 
to Mexico since the President made an 
operation base of our frontier against 
the constituted Government of Mexico. 
That means millions upon millions of 
cartridges — mostly of the soft nosed 
or dum-dum type outlawed by civilised 
peoples — thousands of rifles, thou- 
sands upon thousands of pounds of 
dynamite. Millions of death dealing 

implements sent in the name of human- 
179 



180 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

ity to a country seething in anarchy 
and reeking in blood. It is a noble 
record ! 

It is also on file in the Senate that 
after the raids upon Santa Isabel, 
January IS, 1916, Columbus, March 9, 
1916, and Glenn Springs, May 6, 1916, 
and after the Government had complete 
knowledge of Carranza's unfriendliness, 
as explicitly set forth in Secretary 
Lansing's note of June 20, 1916 — 
after these massacres and while United 
States troops under General Pershing 
were making their way into Mexico in 
pursuit of Villa — three large ship- 
ments of munitions, sailing from New 
York, discharged their cargoes for 
Carranza at Veracruz, March ISth, 
April 1st, and May 23rd! 

The ambush of General Pershing's 
detachment and obvious treachery of 
Carranza's troops at Parral occurred 
April 13th. On April 18th Secretary 
Lansing, according to unrefuted record 
in the House of Representatives, issued 
an order permitting Carranza to import 
one million rounds of small arms am- 
munition into Mexico ! 

And after further treachery and the 
killing of United States soldiers at Car- 



1 



Dum-Diims 181 

rizal on June 21, 1916, an intellectual 
anarchist from Mexico, an intellectual 
pacifist from California, and others 
more intelligent, if less sincere, urged 
upon the Administration the raising of 
the embargo just replaced, and were 
actually granted an audience ! 

Lincoln Steffens, the American in- 
terpreter of Carranza's ambitions, 
wrote in the Ma}^, 1916, issue of 
Eevryhodif s Magazine: " Huerta . . . 
thought the Mexican people would kill, 
rape and rob every American in Mexico 
. . . and that's what Villa thought . . . 
that's what the men and the interests 
back of Villa thought when they planned 
that raid into New Mexico " ! 

The Department of Justice, by di- 
rection of President Wilson, made an 
investigation immediately after the 
New Mexico raid which proved conclu- 
sively that " Villa had no suppojt from 
Americans except that which he ob- 
tained by theft." And this investiga- 
tion was made at a time when the Ad- 
ministration was under fire and eager 
to charge, if it could be substanti- 
ated, that the pernicious activity of 
Americans was the cause of much of 
the border trouble. StefFens' implica- 



182 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

tion is not only outrageous, but is based 
on false premises. 

Senator Bacon, then Chairman of 
Foreign Relations Committee, said 
" When Americans cross that river 
(Rio Grande) the United States has no 
further interest in them." 

Dr. David Starr Jordan says, " The 
Americans who went to Mexico did so 
at their own risk." 

Senator Stone, Democratic Chair- 
man of Foreign Relations Committee, 
told those who exclaimed at the loss of 
Americans on the Lusitana, " Well, it 
was their own fault ; why did they go 
on the boat.'^ They had been warned." 

When the raping of nuns by Car- 
ranza soldiers was reported to Bryan, 
then Secretary of State, he replied to 
Fathers Kelly and Tiernan, " That's 
nothing. Two American women were 
raped by Huerta's soldiers near Tam- 
pico in 1913." 

There appears to have grown up 
among us some strange and unlovely 
brands of Americanism. 

At a time when they could not get 
them elsewhere we furnished arms to a 
people in anarchy, thus helping to make 
a shambles of their country ; and we 



Dum-Dums 183 

have put into the hands of a treacher- 
ous soldiery the bullets with which they 
have killed our own people. 

And this is " service to humanity " ! 



What Mexico Needs 

WE have several wrong theories 
about Mexico. We hear so 
much that is based on theory, on preju- 
dice ; so much that is inspired by pre- 
conceived notions of Mexican charac- 
ter and Mexican ambitions ; such a call- 
ing of names, such an array of cocksure 
panaceas for Mexico's ailments, such a 
parading of ignorance — it is small 
wonder bewilderment rules among us. 

Some call the bloody carnival which 
has held the country in its horrid grip, 
a " popular uprising for land " ; others 
say it is a " revolt against oppressive 
conditions." Neither is the essential 
motive — viz. the revolutionary habit 
of the politically ambitious and socially 
radical. The present period has been 
called " abnormal " ; it is not. The 
history of Mexico is filled with such. 
Nor is it " civil war." Throughout 
Mexican history, less than one per cent, 
of the population has ever engaged in 

one of these revolutionary epidemics. 

184 



What Mexico Needs 185 

The great mass of Mexico is strug- 
gling to secure neither land nor po- 
litical rights ; it is not struggling at 
all. It is not bloodthirsty and fond 
of fighting, as is ignorantlj maintained 
in the United States. Peace, at almost 
any price, is what this simple minded, 
easily misled multitude is praying for; 
they have never as a people had sym- 
pathy with the revolutionists, with any 
set of them, despite the pathetic stories 
of their struggle for " life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness," relayed to 
Washington by native revolutionary 
agents. The common people, el pueblo, 
have no interest in any political up- 
heaval ; they know that whether the lo- 
cal jefe owes his appointment to Diaz, 
Madero, Huerta, or Carranza, they 
will get about the same deal, which is 
not, and never has been, a square one. 

Because a few gifted junta propa- 
gandists discourse earnestly and elo- 
quently on " constitution," " patriot- 
ism," " free elections," we are led into 
believing that the Mexicans think as we 
think on human equity, understand as 
we understand democratic principles, 
and co-operate as we co-operate for 
democratic government. Because of 



186 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

the tremendous industrial advance of 
the country through foreign brain and 
foreign capital, we are prone to regard 
Mexico as approaching our general 
standards of business and economic and 
political sense; whereas, in reality a 
very small class has a veneer of culture 
and political method and economical 
sanity, while basically the nation is 
without public opinion or political 
habit or democratic thought, 

Mexico is filled to overflowing with 
conscienceless agitators who call them- 
selves patriots, but their impassioned 
speech means nothing, literally noth- 
ing. They are not sincere, they are 
not loyal, they are not brave; no more 
than the average Mexican do they know 
even the meaning of patriotism. 

It is the tragedy of Mexico that a 
small group of agitators, or " intellec- 
tuals " as you please, should have the 
imagination, but neither the capacity 
nor the equipment to carry through, 
nor the judgment to wait on education. 
So every once in a while, one or an- 
other group of such visionaries, heed- 
less of the unpreparedness of their fel- 
lows, over-estimating their own qualifi- 
cations, set out to run the Government ; 



What Mexico Needs 187 

and at once clash with another group 
seeking the same thing — indulgence of 
political ambition without thought of 
the " submerged 80 per cent." 

First and last, these groups have had 
a long trial at running Mexico, under 
the constitution which " expresses the 
aspirations of the Mexican people," and 
with control of courts and legislation. 
They have raised and cast down dic- 
tators, but not yet have they succeeded 
in working together steadily for mu- 
tual welfare and their own advance- 
ment. A stable state and law and 
justice is not to be built on spoliation, 
which seems to have been the medium 
of reform upon which they have chiefly 
relied. 

That is why a strong central gov- 
ernment is needed, that peace may be as- 
sured long enough to give the people 
time for the education and training 
they must have to fit themselves for 
democratic government. And until 
Mexico has such central government 
forceful enough to command respect of 
life and property throughout the land, 
Mexico cannot progress economically, 
politically, or socially — for the pres- 
ent is a social, even more than a po- 



188 What's the Matter with Mexico? 

litical upheaval, and unfortunately for 
Mexico the agitators of its budding 
" middle class " are making the worst 
instead of the best use of their small 
learning and big opportunity by up- 
setting the poise of their countrymen 
with inflammatory speech and impossi- 
ble promise. 

So the first need of Mexico after 
stable government, is honesty within, 
including particularly the honest treat- 
ment of its lowly class. (1) Honest 
courts, which she has never had; (2) 
Revision of the land laws so that taxes 
are fairly levied, that the holdings of 
great bodies be made costly, and small 
holdings made easier by governmental 
irrigation projects; (3) Control and 
heavy reduction of the pulque traffic ; 
(4) Extension and improvement of the 
educational system, including the wide 
introduction of vocational training 
schools — for practical training rather 
than their present " culture " idea of 
education is what the bulk of the peo- 
ple should have. For the rest, given 
honesty, Mexico will grow; her poten- 
tialities are great. 

Honesty, justice, — these are the 
things that she must have; these are 



What Mexico Needs 189 

the things which her leaders seem un- 
able to give her until they themselves 
undergo a further development of char- 
acter — a development which shall 
bring them cohesion, stability as well 
as honesty. This can come only by 
education, either from within or with- 
out ; but in either case it will be a slow, 
a very slow process. 

Let the American never think he can 
change the temperament of the Mexi- 
can; he will be able to establish justice 
and maintain it — if he keeps his eye 
open — but for the rest he must accept 
what he finds as the character funda- 
mental, and build upon it and in har- 
mony with it, as the American business 
men have done. Mexico is not Iowa; 
nor are the tastes and the habits of 
the Mexicans those of New England. 
It wouldn't be Mexico if they were ; and 
above all it will be well to keep Mexico, 
Mexico. 

The land question is a most im- 
portant one in the regeneration of Mex- 
ico, but it would be just as impossible 
to carry out in Mexico the full dream 
of the free land idealists as to put into 
practical effect any other socialist 
brain storm in New York. Further- 



190 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

more, there is not the general " land 
hunger " which tourist authors of col- 
ourful pen delight to portray for con- 
sumption in the United States of 
America. 

This isn't to say that there have not 
been plenty of instances in Mexico 
where the Indians and the Mexicans 
were outrageously defrauded through 
their ignorance, unjust land laws, and 
exploiting land companies of both na- 
tive and foreign personnel. Of such 
injustice the Indians have been the most 
frequent victims, particularly the Ya- 
quis in Sonora, to whom my sympathy 
always flies when I hear they have 
" broken out again," to avenge the 
wrongs done them by the Mexicans who 
stole their lands and then sold them to 
foreigners. 

Always land has been sold in large 
blocks in Mexico with little thought of 
the small holder. Yet when the land 
question is offered, as President Wil- 
son has advanced it, as the cause of 
revolution, it is well to consider facts. 
Diaz in his very last message to Con- 
gress suspended the legal proving up 
act of 1884 — the non-compliance with 
which, through ignorance, had led to 



What Mexico Needs 191 

the loss of their property by the In- 
dians — and appointed a commission to 
make a thorough study of the subject. 
And second, Madero, whose presiden- 
tial campaign was made on the free land 
slogan, made but one attempt at land 
division after he had been elected, al- 
though his family was and is among the 
largest holders in Mexico. This at- 
tempt was the purchase, from a rela- 
tive of the family, of a large piece in 
Tamaulipas State at so high a figure 
that the people could not afford to buy 
it when parcelled for their purchase. 

A little knowledge of Mexico is also 
helpful when discussing its problems. 
Many people think of Mexico as a land 
of milk and honey, as everywhere a 
fertile garden ; w^hich is quite the wrong 
picture. Only the pieces on the coasts 
and alongside water are naturally of 
the garden variety ; for the greater part 
the plains are stretches upon great 
stretches where cultivation is impossible 
except by irrigation. Irrigation proj- 
ects are among the urgent of Mexico's 
needs. 

The " 80 per cent." Mexican does 
not want, cannot use, much land. All 
over Mexico, wherever you find him, 



192 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

and you find him everywhere water 
flows, he cultivates just so much as is 
necessary to su]Dply his wants and to 
leave something over for sale. There 
are few watered sections where this 
small holder is not found, and almost 
invariably, the land in excess of what 
he puts in use, lies fallow. 

Guasave, a hamlet of about five hun- 
dred in Sinaloa State, has a native com- 
munity land holding which is more or 
less typical of the average Mexican's at- 
titude towards quantities of land larger 
than he has immediate use for. This 
holding amounts to about thirty thou- 
sand acres, and scarcely seven hundred 
are under cultivation ! 

Community lands were originally es- 
tablished for protection against the 
bandits that roamed the country at 
will before the coming of Porfirio Diaz, 
for the assurance of water and the bet- 
ter working of the soil. In most of the 
reclamation projects undertaken by 
foreigners on government and unsur- 
veyed and unoccupied land, the Gov- 
ernment exacted that a proportion of 
the land be sold back to the natives at 
a given fair price after the water had 
been put on it; and that half of 



What Mexico Needs 193 

the previously unsurveyed government 
land, which the projectors had sur- 
veyed as part of their contract, be re- 
turned free of expense to the Govern- 
ment. The idea under these require- 
ments being to get government land 
surveyed at no cost to the Mexican 
Government, and to bring water onto 
the land, which otherwise would never 
have been watered and therefore of no 
use to the natives, at a very small cost 
to the native purchaser, and no cost to 
the Government beyond certain grants 
from the enormous quanities of idle 
land. 

Some of these Community lands have 
passed into foreign hands quite legiti- 
mately, because of this disposition of 
the native to work only what he uses 
— a community being of the nature of 
a stock company in so far as each 
member may dispose of his pro rata — 
but the majority have been undis- 
turbed. 

In the States of Jalisco, Morelos, 
Aguas Calientes and Chihuahua, land is 
held in large quantities by a few owners 
and the agrarian question is justly 
pressing; yet the situation is not as 
black as painted, for even in Chihuahua 



194 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

something like fifty thousand natives, 
it is said, are tilling community land. 
In Oaxaca where three quarters of the 
about one million population is Indian, 
community land, held in large areas be- 
yond the cultivated acres, has changed 
ownership hardly at all. 

An experiment was made a couple of 
years ago in land division by the Ha- 
cienda San Sebastian near Torreon 
among the men that had been working 
on the place for wages, which throws a 
significant light on the natives' feeling 
on the " land question." When the 
plan of division was announced the men 
celebrated their good fortune by sere- 
nading the owner, their former em- 
ployer, and appeared overjoyed with 
the scheme which not only gave them 
land but their share of the live stock 
on the ranch as well. They worked 
with a will and kept it up to the end 
of the first week, when, as they had 
been accustomed to do, they went to the 
manager of the hacienda asking for 
their week's wages. " Wages," ex- 
claimed the manager, " you're no 
longer working for me ; you're working 
for yourselves and must get your money 



What Mexico Needs 195 

out of your crop." And the men quit 
right there asking for a restoration of 
the old order of things that gave them 
regular wages every week's end. 

Such represents with fair correct- 
ness the average peon's attitude on the 
land question. They have not the 
means to cultivate the land as a rule, 
and they are not inclined to do so when 
they have, for the fact is, the Mexican 
is not a success at farming or business ; 
he does not want to work beyond what 
he must to live; and he won't work 
while he has money in his pocket. At 
one time the land in Morelos was dis- 
tributed in great quantities among the 
people but it finally got back again to 
a few owners, almost into original 
hands. 

" Free land " has been the catchword 
both in and out of Mexico to incite 
domestic turbulence and to arouse for- 
eign sympathy. It gave Madero the 
border sympathy of the United States 
which impelled the resignation of Diaz 
— who remembered his lesson of 1876-9 
and believed the United States would 
be as exacting now as then. It re- 
vealed President Wilson as a very cas- 



■f 



196 What's the Matter with Mexico? 

ual reader of Mexican history, and will 
be the doom of any man or party that 
raises it for a shibboleth. 

The peon's lot is by no means the 
unhappy one it is supposed to be by 
those who depend for their information 
on the sensational and deluding stories, 
like " Barbarous Mexico " for example, 
which So often find favour with pro- 
vincial editors. From our viewpoint it 
is never ideal, and there are many in- 
stances and some directions, notori- 
ously Yucatan, w^here he was little bet- 
ter off than a serf. But speaking gen- 
erally he is well treated, wears about the 
same clothes, eats about the same food, 
lives in the same kind of house, as his 
fellow countrymen, who, independently 
till their own ground. To the man 
from the North, the Mexican of the 
tierra, whether working his own ground 
or that of his employer, appears to live 
a wretched, poverty stricken existence. 
But if you live among them you will 
find the most contented, free from care 
people you have ever known. 

The continued influence of the for- 
eigner and gradual education will 
slowly arouse this native to improve his 
general living conditions and to not 



What Mexico Needs 197 

spend every peso which finds its way 
into his hand. Meanwhile the peaceful 
state of his mind (blotting out the last 
five 3^ears) may well be envied by his 
compassionate neighbours to the north. 

And w^hat he needs is not the vote, 
which would only strengthen the grip 
on him of the politician to thus deepen 
his degradation — but a square deal, 
and practical industrial education, 
training, under patient, comprehending 
teachers. 

So also these peons need a religion. 
" No state can have unity unless it pos- 
sess a religion " was what Rousseau 
wrote in that remarkable revolutionary 
tract, *' Contrat Social ; " and none 
suits these people as the Catholic with 
its vestments and aesthetic ritual. Take 
the church out of politics and keep it 
out, but Mexico needs at this stage of 
its civilisation the acolyte and the con- 
fessional. 

Such a class, the overwhelming ma- 
jority, can make no intelligent use of 
self-government; can not defend itself 
against its own until education has fit- 
ted them at least in a measure. As 
sometime Professor WoodroAV Wil- 
son once wrote, " Self-government is 



198 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

not a thing that can be given to any 
people, because it is a form of charac- 
ter and not a form of constitution." 

How can we look for constitutional 
election in Mexico when they have 
neither constitutional method, habit, or 
protection? The Mexican middle class 
thinks and talks much about rights and 
privileges, but has as yet small idea of 
duties and responsibilities ; and slight 
capacity for the self-control which is 
essential to democratic government. 
It is Mexico's job to develop her mid- 
dle class, which must grow slowly and 
without which there is no true democ- 
racy, for through it will come the polit- 
ical intelligence of which Mexico at the 
moment has almost none. It is en- 
tirely natural that these people, un- 
trained and with but a handful of edu- 
cated among them, should accept their 
present freedom from restraint and 
President Wilson's Indianapolis senti- 
ment, as license to kill and loot and rape 
— such being the only way they know 
how to celebrate their new born free- 
dom ! 

For her political rehabilitation Mex- 
ico needs forceful men of unselfish pur- 
pose and constructive ability; for the 



What Mexico Needs 199 

" submerged 80 per cent.," work first, 
and then education — and always fair 
play. The Carranza group thus far 
has evolved no leader of such character 
and ability ; but such a one must arise 
or Mexico be compelled to accept the 
strong helping hand of another nation 
if she is to regain her foothold among 
civilised peoples. And she must be 
made to regain it, if not for her own 
sake, then for our " peace and prosper- 
ity." 



The Cost of a Duty-last Policy 

THERE is only one issue in Mexico 
for America ; there has been but 
one since Woodrow Wilson took oath 
to uphold the Constitution of the 
United States and to defend the rights 
of its citizens: viz., the protection of 
American life and property. 

By instance, principle, and law the 
President's duty lay clear, imperative, 
and defined when he accepted the great 
trust of the people March 4, 1913. 

Except in post-prandial speech how- 
ever, he has given no evidence of ac- 
quaintance with that duty. He has 
proclaimed but never enjoined the 
rights of Americans in Mexico. He 
not only refused to protect these citi- 
zens but used the influence of his great 
office to lead a campaign of slander 
against them which made their position 
in Mexico one of grievous humiliation 
and increased danger. 

It was a craven, unrighteous, un- 
heard of policy to fling to the world's 
200 



Cost of a Duty-Last Policy SOI 

view; it was the very worst and least 
defensible one that could be employed 
in Mexico. It destroyed literally the 
respect in which Americans and the 
United States had been held; it em- 
boldened the lawless to kill our citizens ; 
it led to the raids into our border 
states. It was the hat-in-hand policy 
which every one of smallest knowledge 
of those peoples knows, is of all others 
the very one unsuited to Latin America. 

If the motives for such policy were 
" good " as has been said, then they 
sprung from ignorance of a country, 
its condition, and people's character, 
which must be declared unpardonable in 
an executive with one hundred million 
citizens in his care and a clean-cut prin- 
ciple as exemplar. 

The President had abundant oppor- 
tunity to extend his knowledge of Mex- 
ico, but closed his ear as well as his 
official door to all who could give him 
real light. He had a preconceived 
idea, and he was determined to let it 
guide him. And it has. After three 
years of this treatment, Mexico is deso- 
late and the " submerged 80 per 
cent.," for whose fancied relief the 
President neglected his own, are pros- 



20a Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

trate; Americans have been robbed, 
ruined, murdered, and our army patrols 
the border while the bands play the 
democratic lullaby, " He kept us out of 
war." 

It was not our business whether Mex- 
ico had a Huerta or a Carranza; it 
was our business and our sole and par- 
ticular business to insist on the pro- 
tection of our citizens. Neither Car- 
ranza, who has shown his unfriendli- 
ness repeatedly, nor any other aspirant 
thrown up by the revolutionary shuffle, 
should have been recognised until a 
pledge for the protection of foreign life 
and property had been required. 

The history of our relations with 
Mexico shows that peace and safety 
have always reigned when compliance 
with treaty obligations were exacted. 
Barring twenty-six of the years under 
Diaz and two periods of foreign inva- 
sion, Mexico was from 1810 to 1910 in 
the same state approximately as to-day, 
minus the voided paper money, the high 
powered rifle, the railways, and the elec- 
trical communications. 

Those twenty-six years of peace co- 
incided with the years when the United 
States took the attitude that our only 



Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 203 

interest in Mexico was compliance with 
treaty and international obligations 
towards American citizens, and, as a 
corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, to- 
wards all foreign nationals resident in 
Mexico. This was not mere coinci- 
dence. It was cause and effect. Diaz 
was no more amenable or responsive 
when first he arrived at the Presidency, 
than the others. He was to Juarez 
what INIadero was to him : ^ revolution- 
ist raised to president. But our line 
of soldier presidents stuck to the Ev- 
arts warning — that " protection of 
its citizens was a paramount duty of 
government " — and made Diaz under- 
stand that if he failed to comply with 
his obligations, the United States would 
not hesitate to intervene. And Diaz 
kept his obligations. That unflinch- 
ing, patriotic policy did not lead to war 
any more than a similar discharge of 
his duty by President Wilson would 
have done. It led in 1879 to peace and 
prosperity for both countries. It was 
a genuine " service to humanity." 

And now we have a Commission in 
our midst, a political move on both 
sides of the line, — to discuss the rights 
long ago established by this Govern- 



204* Wliafs the Matter with Mexico? 

ment to protect its border against in- 
vasion, and its citizens in a foreign 
country from pillage and murder. 

It will at least afford amusement at 
this juncture to review the previous 
experiences of the Administration at ne- 
gotiating with Carranza. 

The Niagara Falls mediation. Car- 
ranza refused to recognise it so that 
the few agreements made as to the in- 
ternal affairs of Mexico were abso- 
lutely nullified by Carranza's coming 
into power subsequently without being 
bound by the Conference. The one 
agreement which subsists is ours, pro- 
viding that the United States shall 
never make claim against Mexico for 
the expense of the Veracruz occupation, 
which, as Secretary Lane has said, we 
entered upon so Mexico might under- 
stand that " Huerta must go " — that 
Carranza might come in. 

When we retired from Veracruz, 
and turned Mexico over to anarchy, 
President Wilson tried to get promises 
of good behaviour out of Carranza. 
He gave nothing. He did agree with 
the State Department not to charge 
merchants second duties on the goods 
in the Veracruz Customs House. He 



Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 205 

complied with this ; — but his officials 
sold all the goods at public auction and 
kept the money for the " cause " ! Un- 
cle Sam again held the bag. 

The ABCBUG conference to settle 
the Mexican question — August-Octo- 
ber, 1915, Villa, Zapata, and the State 
of Oaxaca came in. Carranza was 
given ten days to come in, prolonged 
the time by dilatory tactics. The Con- 
ference asked each of his generals sep- 
arately to come in. This prolonged it 
still more. Finally when all his gen- 
erals had refused, Carranza refused; 
and then we recognised Carranza ! 

If however this Commission is a se- 
rious attempt to do something definite 
in the way of remedying the present 
intolerable situation, it will help if the 
American members keep in mind : That 
from 1878 to 1910 we limited ourselves 
to seeing that Mexico treated our cit- 
izens and their interests justly accord- 
ing to treaty stipulations. 

That from 1878 to 1910 Mexico was 
in a condition of constantly increasing 
peace. 

That from 1910 we have ceased to 
exact respect of these treaty obliga- 
tions. 



206 WJiafs the 'Matter with Mexico? 

That from 1910 Mexico has been in 
a condition of increasing disturbance. 

That this is not coincidence but cause 
and effect. 

If the Commission wastes time inves- 
tigating the stories which have been 
brought from the border by " Dr." 
Atl, Dr. Jordan, and Professor Stef- 
fens, their mediations will be as fruit- 
less and their conclusions as trifling 
as the jeremiads of the two well mean- 
ing but misled Americans. 

The Commission might " serve hu- 
manity " perhaps by finding and classi- 
fying the Jordan " vulture " — the 
talkative pacifist having himself failed 
to locate the sinister bird, after giving 
tongue of his find too quickly. One 
result is assured — those American 
Commissioners are going to know a 
whole lot more about Mexico's " deli- 
cate, sensitive race," before they have 
finished their seance. 

If this Commission has any raison 
d'etre, it is, first to ascertain if Car- 
ranza is willing and able to establish 
peace and safety in Mexico and to pun- 
ish those of his soldiers and officers 
that have crossed the border and killed 
Americans ; and second, to inform Mex- 



Cost of a Duty-Last Policy 207 

ico that America's friendship from this 
time depends on the following three 
things : 

1. Effective control by Mexico of her 
border bandits. 

2. Protection of American lives and 
properties and of their legal rights in 
Mexico. 

3. Settlement of foreign and Ameri- 
can claims. 

The first two at once and the third 
as soon as may be. 

Henceforth we must consider our 
duty to ourselves. Deeply as we may 
be moved by the burdens and the strug- 
gles of the Mexicans, our obligations in 
the first instance are not so much in 
solving their problems as in safeguard- 
ing our own people. We have given 
ample evidence of our patience, of our 
good intent to Mexico to the entire 
world. Neither " service to human- 
ity " nor " watchful waiting " has 
proved curative. We can wait no 
longer. Europe from whom we asked a 
free hand, can wait no longer. The 
foreigners whose legitimate enterprise 
and capital developed Mexico can not, 
will not abandon their rightful hold- 
ings. It would ruin them; it would 



208 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

wreck Mexico. We must quit taking 
sides in these revolutions with first one 
and then another of the outcropping 
leaders and return to our traditional 
policy of non-interference. Mexico 
must respect her treaty obligations if 
not by her own will then by the will 
of the United States; not through a 
" war of conquest " but by an expedi- 
tion, that would not necessarily mean 
war, to establish justice in accord with 
the law of civilised nations. 

And whether the American members 
of the Commission say this or not to 
their Mexican confreres, the failure of 
Mexico to comply with these require- 
ments must lead to intervention — dip- 
lomatic welfare work, and arms traffick- 
ers to the contrary notwithstanding, — 
if not by the United States, then, when 
the Great War is won, by England and 
France who will not submit to indignity 
and injustice to their subjects. 

As an aid to peace and the comfort 
of Mexico's " 80 per cent.," it will be 
helpful if Congress makes the embargo 
on arms permanent until actual order 
and safety to foreigners has existed for 
one year. 

However disinclined the Administra- 



Cost of a Duty-Last Policy S09 

tion may be to face it, our responsi- 
bility for present conditions is heavy. 
Because we shirked our duty Mexico's 
problem has become our problem too. 
These four years have been years of 
destruction, murder, humiliation. The 
life loss has been for the Mexicans 
probably two hundred thousand, for us 
nearly four hundred. The property 
loss is no less than three hundred mil- 
lions. The loss in education by the 
young cannot be estimated. The loss 
of the habit of peace is beyond com- 
putation. Because President Wilson 
twice notified the world of our sponsor- 
ship for Mexico, the United States is 
confronted with the probability of be- 
ing held pecuniarily responsible for the 
losses suffered by foreigners. 

Had the United States remained on 
the straight and historic line of limit- 
ing her relations with Mexico to an in- 
sistence that treaty provisions and the 
law of nations be lived up to, the dev- 
astation and the embarrassment could 
have been averted. President Wilson 
took the side track of solicitude for the 
welfare of aliens in an alien land in- 
stead and we are off the main track 
of international procedure and headed 



210 Whafs the Matter with Mexico? 

for the very calamity lie sought to es- 
cape. 

Such is the penalty for putting duty 
last. 



The Answer 

WHEN American citizens working 
in Mexico under treaty rights 
needed and asked the protection of their 
Government, they were made the tar- 
get of official slander and told to get 
out. In response to the killing of 
Americans and the destruction of their 
property, the President wrote notes, 
as recounted by Secretary of State 
Lansing under date June 20, 1916. No 
American can travel Mexico to-day and 
see with his own eyes the plight of the 
lowly, and hear with his own ears de- 
scription of what his fellow country- 
men and women have endured, and not 
hang his head in very shame for his 
puissant, supine Government. 

There are men who call this " peace 
with honour." 

We have both duties and rights in 

Mexico ; we neglected the one and failed 

to exact the other. We trespassed 

upon the rights of the Mexicans and we 

did not assert the rights of our own 
211 



aia What's the Matter with Mexico? 

citizens. We departed from precedent 
long established by disregarding the 
principles and the spirit of our Ameri- 
can doctrine, and allowed Mexico to ig- 
nore the plain and long respected letter 
of her own treaties with us. 

That's what's the matter with Mex- 
ico. 

We have been just neither to our own 
citizens nor helpful to the Mexicans 
whose " uplift " we set out to accom- 
plish. Our citizens are ruined and the 
" submerged 80 per cent." are passing 
through the darkest chapter in their 
history. We interfered with their do- 
mestic affairs when we should not have 
done so ; and we have not interfered 
in the interest of our own people when 
we should have done so. We have 
preached peace; and handed the Mex- 
icans rifles. We have chanted " serv- 
ice to humanity " and abandoned our 
own people. We have made of Mexico 
an experimental station for sociologi- 
cal theories, and now we must pay the 
rent. 

Two things we have failed to do, and 
so failing have got ourselves into the 



TJie Answer 213 

worst muddle in our history: (1) We 
have failed to mind our own business ; 
and (2) we have failed to mind our own 
business. 

And that is why America is in arms 
and Congress is voting a bond issue of 
one hundred and thirty millions of dol- 
lars to pay for the war which Presi- 
dent Wilson kept us out of! 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 



' I ^HE following pages contain advertisements of a 
few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects 



I 



OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



Straight America 

By FRANCES A. KELLOR 



$0.^0 



The United States is a huge melting- 
pot wherein are mixed the conflicting 
traditions and ideals of every race and 
people in the world. This book shows 
how we can control this process, how 
we can best educate and train the im- 
migrant to make him indistinguishably 
American — an integral and necessary 
element in an enlightened and united 
nationalism. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



The Heritage of Tyre 

By WILLIAM BROWN MELONEY 

The first, direct, uncompromising 
demand for a new American mercan- 
tile marine. Mr. Meloney points out 
the opportunity that is now ours, the 
opportunity to recover our lost sea 
prestige and to set our flag waving 
again in every great port of the world. 
Not only is this merchant marine 
needed by our commerce — it is abso- 
lutely necessary and indispensable to 
the support of a truly adequate navy. 
The United States must be a vassal 
on the seas no longer. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



Their True Faith and Allegiance 

By GUSTAVUS OHLINGER 

With an Introduction by Owen Wister 

$o.so 

A fair, impartial discussion of Ger- 
man propaganda in America describ- 
ing the methods in use and the results 
achieved. 

** For the sake of the facts that it 
gathers, this book should be read not 
once, but two or three times, by all 
Americans who believe in Union, in 
Lincoln, and in Liberty — worth keep- 
ing in mind and dwelling upon, not 
merely to-day, but during many to-mor- 
rows. It bears upon the future of our 
national health." — Owen Wister. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



The Forks of the Road 

By WASHINGTON GLADDEN 

Awarded the prize offered by the 
Church Peace Union for the best essay 
on war and peace. 

A powerful indictment of war which 
calls upon the political and religious 
forces of our country to give up pre- 
paredness programs and to follow a 
policy that will make for the preva- 
lence of peace. Never has Dr. Glad- 
den written with such fervor and in- 
spiration ; his book goes straight to 
the heart of our national problem ; 
without cant or sentimentalism, he 
shows the course true Americanism 
must take. 

**A wise and noble essay." — Independent 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 



Americanization 

By royal DIXON 

$o.so 

What are we doing to Americanize 
the alien ? How can we make sure 
that he will emerge from the melting- 
pot willing to support and to contrib- 
ute to our institutions ? These are the 
questions which Mr. Dixon asks and 
to which he offers a clear and simple 
answer, broad and practical in vision. 
His suggestions are more than merely 
constructively patriotic — they are stir- 
ringly hopeful. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 61-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS 

" Not since Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, gave his now 
famous pastoral letter to the world has more eloquence and 
truth been compressed into so small a space," 



The Pentecost of Calamity 

By OWEN WISTER 

Boards, $.50 

" One of the most striking and moving utterances. . . . 
Let all Americans read it." — TAe Copgregationalist. 

" It is wTitten with sustained charm and freshness of 
insight." — A'ew York Times. 

" It is a flaming thing, itself a tongue of Pentecost." — 
Boston Advertiser. 

"Mr. Wister's artistic power at its best." — Phila- 
delpfda Ledger. 

" A strong book which sets out to be just a passionate 
plea to America to find its own soul." — Rabbt Stephen 
S. Wise. 

" In ' The Pentecost of Calamity ' Owen Wister sees 
and speaks as a prophet. With rare spiritual insight 
and sympathy he penetrates to the real meaning of the 
world tragedy under whose shadow we are living. I 
am glad we have an American writer able to speak the 
voiceless longing of an awakened world." — J?ev. Charles 
A, Eaton ^ Pastor of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 










x*^^^^ 






8 1^ ^t;.^' ^ , . '/^ * ') S ^ \V -;?> ^ 8 , A •* <.^^ 



^i 




... ,,.^^ 






f 

■'^A v* 



,0 



x^^«. 



y, .^-" — k-. 






!5 -^K 



?. 



\^ 



■^ 












■ 



/x-^ 



o- 



qJ' ^ ••, c> -1. c,^ 






'\ "^^^ v' 



.^^ 



■^"-^ . 






O, 



v-^ 



xO<^. 



V 

.A' 









..■^' 






^ . "^.. 



"<>- v^^^ 

x^^.. 









■ 1 



,v 



,*-^ "*. 



1 » ^^' 



















■"^. c,^' 



/^ 







^MvS-'" 



''V c 



v^* 



V. .<^" 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



015 833 611 A 






I I 111!, 



